AMD's Radeon VII Supports DirectML - An Alternative to DLSS?
In a recent interview with 4 Gamers (Source in Japanise), AMD's Adam Kozak confirmed that their upcoming Radeon VII graphics card would support DirectML, a Machine Learning (ML) extension to DirectX.
Think of DirectML as the Machine Learning equivalent of DXR (DirectX Raytracing), allowing DirectX 12 to support advanced features and utilise AI to improve future games.
An example of how AI can be seen in Nvidia's DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling) technology, which uses a Deep Learning algorithm to boost game performance while offering a final image that can provide superior image quality to TAA (Temporal Anti Aliasing). In the past, Microsoft has showcased DirectML achieving similar feats, which means that there may soon be a multi-vendor alternative to Nvidia's DLSS technology.
DirectML supports all DirectX 12 compliant hardware, much like DXR, and like DXR it can also exploit the hardware acceleration capabilities of modern graphics architectures. In effect, this will allow developers to access hardware features like Nvidia's Tensor cores, just like how DXR enables developers to utilise Turing's RT cores. In the case of DirectML, the performance of AMD's Radeon VII could be used to deliver a "DLSS-like" effect, but using an approach that will work on Radeon hardware.
AMD's Adam Kozak stated that the (translated) "Radeon VII shows excellent results" when the company experimented with DirectML.
