Microsoft announced updates to the DirectX API that would pave the way for neural rendering. Neural rendering is a concept where portions of a frame in real-time 3D graphics are drawn using a generative AI model that works in tandem with classic raster 3D graphics pipeline, along with other advancements, such as real-time ray tracing. This is different from AI-based super resolution technologies. The generative AI here is involved in rendering the input frames for a super resolution technology. One of the nuts and bolts of neural rendering is cooperative vectors, enable an information pathway between the conventional graphics pipeline and the generative AI, telling it what it's doing, what needs to be done by the AI model, and what the ground truth for the model is.

Microsoft says that its HLSL team is working with AMD, Intel, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm to bring cross-vendor support for cooperative vectors in the DirectX ecosystem. The very first dividends of this effort will be seen in the upcoming NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50-series "Blackwell" GPUs, which will use cooperative vectors to drive neural shading. "Neural shaders can be used to visualize game assets with AI, better organize geometry for improved path tracing performance and tools to create game characters with photo-realistic visuals," Microsoft says.

The box-art of upcoming GALAX GeForce RTX 5080 "Blackwell" graphics card has much to say about the graphics architecture, without dropping any explicit mentions. The front-face of the box features a hooded human face—nothing fancy, until you begin to pay attention to the details. Half the face is composed of triangles streaming toward the face, while the other half is composed in place by a blue stream of light, as if to denote that it's being drawn by a fundamentally different method than "triangles."

The triangles here represent classic raster 3D graphics, while the other spirit-like half denotes neural rendering. Here's where it gets interesting. Both kinds of rendering are being applied to the same frame, and so neural rendering is fundamentally different from DLSS 3 Frame Generation, a technology that draws alternate frames using optical flow, motion vectors, and AI. Neural rendering appears to be, at least from this GALAX box-art, a technology that runs in real-time, where some elements, portions, or details of a frame are rendered by a generative AI, and others by raster 3D graphics.