News: Microsoft Targets 15-second Boot for Windows 7

[slimf]

No, the OS developer only has to write an abstraction layer or mini driver and fully release the specs. its then up to the hardware manufacturer to design the cards and the actual drivers that talk to the card and the mini driver or abstraction layer. This allows the card manufacturer to implement features their competition doesn't have and therefore create progress, what we have now is MS setting the pace in the form of Directx version and features that actually slow progress and at the same time lock out or hinder non MS technologies and implementations.

I think the advantages of having the DX layer out weigh the disadvantages. Back in the good old days poor developers had to write for specific hardware, for example they may have needed to write code to support three different types of sound cards. This development effort takes away from the core development effort (the game or whatever it may be). I think we would find that nvidia and amd work very closely with Microsoft on DirectX as it benifits all three companies.
Video card manufacturer's seem to be competing not with individual features these days but rather they seem to be competing on performance and performance per dollar.

[davidgol]

Originally Posted by ExtremePC

The reason ... the PS3 software talks directly to the video hardware with no abstraction layer like DX9 on top.

hmm .. not sure I like the idea of going back to (more) direct access to hardware. Abstraction layers are what attempt to keep adventurous programmers from destabilising the OS. They're required if you want to achieve an open hardware architecture.
Close up the hardware architecture (a la OSX, PS3), and you can afford to drop a few layers because you can trust the developers a lot more .. because typically, you employ them!

[arkay]

If it were just about HAL's and the advantages of them I'd agree but there's more to it than that.

It also allows MS and NVidia/AMD to control their market. We perceive that they are competing on performance but are they really?

The rate the gfx card market turns over would be any manufacturers dream. That isn't by accident and the ability to control it via software has been witnessed time and time again. Like Crysis being advertised as needing DX10 for full effects, of course you just turn on full effects in DX 9.

I prefer the old days like the Amiga where you had a hardware abstraction layer and could code "workbench" friendly graphics apps. But you could also fully take over the hardware and write directly to the gfx chipset, sqeezing out every last drop. Not for malicious purpose, but for performance.

It's a pity that ability has been stripped from us as a whole lot of great development ceased when low level hardware access was denied us.

There's too many people trying to control what you do and when on your PC these days. It isn't yours anymore.

Cheers,

Arkay.