Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) is a software rasterizer and a component of

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

graphics runtime in

Windows 7 Windows 7 is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was Software release life cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009, and became generally available on October 22, ...

and later. It is available for

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and Windows Server 2008 through platform update for Windows Vista. WARP can be used when no compatible hardware is available, in kernel mode applications or in a headless environment, or for remote rendering of

Direct2D Direct2D is a 2D vector graphics application programming interface (API) designed by Microsoft and implemented in Windows 10, Windows 8, Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 (with Platform Update ...

DirectWrite DirectWrite is a text layout and glyph rendering API by Microsoft. It was designed to replace GDI/GDI+ and Uniscribe for screen-oriented rendering and was first shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as Windows Vista and Wi ...

for Remote Desktop Connection clients. WARP is a full-featured

Direct3D Direct3D is a graphics application programming interface (API) for Microsoft Windows. Part of DirectX, Direct3D is used to render three-dimensional graphics in applications where performance is important, such as games. Direct3D uses hardware ...

10.1 renderer device with performance on par with current low-end

graphics card A graphics card (also called a video card, display card, graphics accelerator, graphics adapter, VGA card/VGA, video adapter, display adapter, or colloquially GPU) is a computer expansion card that generates a feed of graphics output to a displa ...

s, such as Intel GMA 3000, when running on multi-core CPUs. To achieve this level of rendering performance, WARP employs advanced techniques such as just-in-time compilation to

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel, based on the 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

machine code In computer programming, machine code is computer code consisting of machine language instructions, which are used to control a computer's central processing unit (CPU). For conventional binary computers, machine code is the binaryOn nonb ...

and support for advanced vector extensions such as

SSE2 SSE2 (Streaming SIMD Extensions 2) is one of the Intel SIMD (Single Instruction, Multiple Data) processor supplementary instruction sets introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2000. SSE2 instructions allow the use of ...

and SSE4.1. WARP supports Direct3D 11 runtime and is compatible with feature levels 10_1, 10_0, 9_3, 9_2, and 9_1; in Direct3D 11.1 runtime, WARP additionally supports feature levels 11_0 and 11_1. In Windows 8, WARP provides functionality for the "Microsoft Basic Render Driver" which replaces kernel-mode VGA driver. In Windows 8.1, WARP has been updated to support feature level 11_1 and tiled resources. In Windows 10, WARP has been updated to support Direct3D 12 at feature level 12_1; under Direct3D 12, WARP also replaces the Reference rasterizer. In Windows 11, WARP was updated to support feature level 12_2 ('' DirectX 12 Ultimate'') with variable rate shading, sampler feedback, mesh shaders, and DirectX Raytracing. Microsoft releases recent versions of as a downloadable NuGet package, which can be side-loaded by applications and can work with the redistributable Direct3D 12 runtime (Agility SDK).

References

External links

MSDN - Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP) Guide
DirectX Windows 7 {{windows-stub