At this year's Game Developer Conference in San Francisco, Microsoft the three biggest GPU manufacturers kicked off a week of lectures on advanced graphics techniques with an introduction to the next 'big thing': cooperative vectors. But for all the promise the new feature offers, it'll be a good while before we see them making a big difference in the games we're playing. Not least because one GPU vendor has only just joined the matrix core gang.
If you're wondering just what exactly cooperative vectors are, then you're in good company, because despite announcing them earlier in the year, Microsoft has done a pretty rotten job at describing just what they are, how they work, and what you can really do with them. Fortunately, Microsoft's head of DirectX development, Shawn Hargreaves, offered a nice overview of the forthcoming feature to its graphics API. He's a Windows guy, but it's also worth noting that it will be coming to Vulkan, too.
