Some DX11 details from Microsoft

In Seattle the Gamefest is hosted. On the Gamefest Microsoft shared some abstract details on DirectX 11. DX11 will be supported fully by Windows Vista and arrives in the year 2010. Some new features:

• Compute shaders - the GPU to be used for more than just 3D graphics, so that developers can take advantage of the graphics card as a parallel processor -- e.g. Physics.
• Multi-threaded resource handling -- this will allow games to better take advantage of multi-core machines 
• Support for tessellation, which blurs the line between super high quality pre-rendered scenes and scenes rendered in real-time, allowing game developers to refine models to be smoother and more attractive when seen up close. A feature that ATI already supports at hardware level.