Windows 8 with Support for Low-Power Graphics Hardware

Microsoft benifits the users by delivering  a “visually compelling, high-performance experience”, even if they enjoy Windows 8 on highly mobile devices, in which the battery is the primary power source. Battery life needed improvements, but the performance levels of the device were not to be forgotten either. Thus, new GPU architectures emerged from Microsoft’s hardware partners, to ensure that all goes according to plan. When designing Windows 8 for use on low-power graphics hardware, Microsoft focused on optimizing the graphics architectures called “tile-based rendering,” commonly used in such devices. The idea behind this architecture is that the graphics engine uses a high-performance (but small) memory cache. The GPU renders the screen in tiles (sections), processing the same set of commands for each tile, and not for the entire screen. “The intent is to minimize operations that use memory off-chip, therefore keeping power consumption low and performance high. Repeatedly accessing memory off-chip is expensive both in terms of time and power consumption,” Copeland explains. For increased efficiency, Windows 8 comes with additional flags, hints, and new APIs, all of which were meant to minimize the number of times the tiles are rendered. 

Microsoft also looked into another means to reduce power consumption. One of them involves performing graphics rendering calculations using fewer bits of precision. Additionally, the geometry rendering performance was greatly improved in Windows 8, Copeland says, adding that the company also focused on optimizing the rendering of images.“We worked closely with our graphics hardware partners to design TIR. Dramatic improvements were made possible because of that partnership. DirectX 11.1 hardware is already on the market today and we’re working with our partners to make sure more TIR-capable products will be broadly available,” he continues. In Windows 8, users will benefit from improved pixel format conversion and image scaling, while professionals will enjoy optimizations when it comes to working with JPEG, GIF, and PNG formats.