DirectStorage is an application programming interface (API) that is used exclusively for Xbox Series X consoles. The announcement of the last hours is that Microsoft intends to bring this API to Windows with the support of PCIe 3.0 SSDs and that it will be compatible with all graphics with DirectX 12 support.
DirectStorage was designed by Microsoft engineers for Xbox Series X game consoles to reduce CPU load when handling requests from NVMe drives and save valuable CPU cycles for other workloads.
Thanks to DirectStorage, large batches of I / O requests can be sent with little intervention on the CPU load, thus reducing request overhead to the NVMe SSD. This should improve performance on data loading and overall performance by reducing CPU usage.
Microsoft has not disclosed what the hardware requirements are for DirectStorage technology to work, but we believe that any computer with a modern graphics card and an NVMe SSD could support this technology without issue.
DirectStorage was designed with a game console like Xbox in mind. A game console has closed hardware and the implementation of this technology is much easier than on a PC, where the hardware has hundreds of thousands of variations.
The API will be supported by all DirectX 12 GPUs and PCIe 3.0 SSDs that support NVMe. It is not clear if all versions of the NVMe protocol will be supported, or if there will be any limitations.
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