Microsoft officially announced DirectX 11 during its Gamefest 2008 developer conference in Seattle, Washington.
The latest Microsoft multimedia API package will include improved multi-threading capabilities, hardware-based tesselation and new shader technology that re-positions GPUs as general-purpose parallel processors.
Microsoft CTO Chris Satchell explained that the company wanted “to break away from purely having a paradigm of pixels, vertices and shaders."
Microsoft has also graciously decided not to force users to purchase DX11-specific hardware. Satchell readily admitted that Microsoft had deliberately created a discontinuity between DX10 and DX9, but emphasized that "DX11 is totally compatible with DX10.”