DirectX Agility SDK 1.620 and 1.722-preview release blog - DirectX Developer Blog

Today, we are pleased to announce the release of Agility SDK 1.620 retail and Agility SDK 1.722-preview!
Agility SDK 1.620 brings DirectX Dump Files to retail, along with Fence Barriers Tier 1, the Batched Asynchronous Command List APIs, and Partial Graphics Programs.
Meanwhile, Agility SDK 1.722-preview introduces major updates to DirectX Raytracing capabilities for highly detailed, dynamic scenes.
Here’s the list of everything in Agility SDK 1.620:
And here’s what’s new in Agility SDK 1.722-preview:
Quick note: Shader Model 6.10 remains in preview for this release, but it won’t stay there for long! Keep an eye out for it in the Agility SDK 1.621 retail release, coming in early December.
For more detail, including drivers, download links, and feature support, read on down below.
These releases are available on Agility SDK Downloads today! As usual, the features in this release come with day one PIX support. Be sure to check out the PIX release blog post for more information.
AMD Software: Agility SDK Developer Preview Edition 26.20.12.01 (1.722 preview)
AMD Software: DirectX Compute Graph Compiler (DxCGC) Developer Preview Edition 26.10.07.11
Check out AMD’s GPUOpen post for more details
See the Feature Support table at the end of this post for more detail on hardware support by feature.
Advanced Shader Delivery (ASD) delivers precompiled shaders so games can avoid doing that compilation on the player’s PC. Agility SDK 1.620 expands how developers prepare and use that shader data.
Partial Graphics Programs allow reuse of compiled program parts across pipeline variants, which can decrease download size and compile time. See the blog post about this topic for more details.
Explicitly Specified PSDBs enables a game to use more than one PSDB, chunking up downloads based on DLC or other criteria. Note that support for multiple SODBs/PSDBs per title from Xbox is not available at this time.
The SODB Enumeration and Transaction API lets developers inspect and update the state-object databases used for ASD. The D3D12StateObjectCompiler.exe tool has been rewritten to sit on top of this API, proving that it’s sufficient for any use case we’ve seen for this database.
Serialized root-signature support lets ASD’s offline compilation tools and the D3D12 runtime work from the same root-signature descriptions. After PSO/SO creation succeeds, you can retrieve the root signature object for use on the command list.
An application programmed to check for specific capability tiers may not recognize capability tiers introduced by a newer runtime. We’ve added an additional way to perform capability checks with CheckFeatureSupport1. This lets the application specify an SDK version and clamps reported tier values to those defined at or before that version, avoiding unexpectedly newer values.
Spec: CheckFeatureSupport1
Older copy and clear commands impose ordering even when operations touch independent memory. That can serialize work the GPU could otherwise overlap.
The batched APIs let an application express independent work while using Enhanced Barriers for dependencies. For example, CopyBufferRegions can batch independent copies so they may execute concurrently; the application inserts an Enhanced Barrier before a subsequent operation that depends on their results.
ClearTextureSubresources also clears by resource and format rather than requiring view descriptors, while FillBuffers provides batched buffer fills. ClearBoundRenderTargetViews and ClearBoundDepthStencilView allow you to do clears even within render passes.
We’re also providing the option of enabling a fallback layer to bring emulated support for the new commands to older hardware, check out more detail in our in-depth blog.
Spec: Batched Asynchronous Commands
Middleware that receives a resource does not necessarily have the format-cast list supplied when the resource was created. Without a query, it is nigh impossible for the middleware to track this information.
ID3D12Resource3::GetCastableFormatsCount and GetCastableFormats expose the recorded list. A component can retrieve the declared view formats from the resource itself. This retrieves the explicit creation-time cast list; it does not grant new casting permissions.
Spec: Castable Format Query
GUID Texture Layout lets the application specify D3D-defined texture layouts or query driver-managed layouts. One supported scenario is CPU-accessible NV12 resources.
Spec: GUID Texture Layout
In February, we released a preview of Fence Barriers, a new D3D12 capability that lets you wait for and/or signal D3D12 fences within a command list. This Agility SDK moves Tier 1 support to the retail release, letting you use it in retail games.
Tier 2 support, which adds support for cross-queue waits, is still restricted to preview Agility SDKs for now, but it will be available in a future retail Agility SDK.
Spec: Enhanced Barriers
Compiling each operation of an ML model as an independent shader can hide the graph structure needed to optimize across operations. MLIR programs preserve that higher-level information, including opportunities to fuse work and avoid intermediate memory traffic.
The runtime interfaces support compiling MLIR programs into executable programs within D3D12 state objects. DXCGC produces optimized graph representations, and the driver performs final hardware code generation. Engines can integrate that compiled graph work with D3D12 execution.
Spec: MLIR Programs and DXCGC
Tone mapping and color transformations do not always need to occupy the 3D engine. VPblit 3DLUT exposes color-space conversion, one-dimensional lookup tables, and a three-dimensional lookup table through dedicated video-processing hardware.
Where supported, applications can perform those transformations as part of their video-processing pipeline instead of implementing the same work in shaders.
For an example of this new capability in action, check out Intel’s D3D12 VPBlit LUT sample, which combines color-space conversion