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Linked Display Adapters

A linked display adapter (LDA) is a mode of operation in which multiple physical adapters are merged, thus appearing as a single logical adapter. From an application’s point of view, only the logical adapter is visible. However, the underlying WDDM driver uses all the physical adapters within the link to improve the performance of the logical adapter. The logical adapter typically offers much higher performance than any of the individual physical adapters can provide.

The driver can link physical adapters that have identical capabilities and identical memory configurations. Every physical adapter that is part of a logical adapter must be visible on the PCI Express (PCIe) bus as an independent device. The model assumes that all nodes in a given physical adapter have uniform access to the physical adapter’s memory.

LDAs are supported only on the PCIe bus. LDA configuration is not supported on accelerated graphics port (AGP) systems.

 

Multi-GPU & Aero Glass

After careful consideration of the market segment and the complexity involved in the working of multiple GPUs, it was decided that some of the new WDDM v1.1 features will not be made available on such systems.

For example, Windows 7 will disable system memory savings for Aero Glass if two or more active graphics adapters are present. That feature depends on device bitmaps that are disabled when the desktop is extended across multiple monitors that are driven by multiple GPUs which are not linked together.

 

Other Microsoft Scoops :

• The Microsoft Windows 7 Free Upgrade Program
• Windows Anytime Upgrade For Windows 7 Revealed!
• Microsoft Windows 7 Graphics Enhancements
• Windows Office 14 Details Leaked!
• An Inside Look Into The New Windows 7 Experience Index!
• Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 RTM Details
• The Microsoft Windows 7 SKU Strategy Revealed!
• The Latest Microsoft Windows 7 Roadmap
• Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 2 Details
• Windows Vista Service Pack 2's Latest Release Schedule
• Latest Details On Windows Vista Service Pack 2
• Installing DirectX 9 Can & Will Kill DirectX 10

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	Page	Topic
	1	• Introduction • Windows 7 & Direct3D 10
	2	• Desktop Windows Manager (DWM) • DirectX 10-Level-9
	3	• Remote Rendering • Direct2D API
	4	• Direct3D 11 Introduction • Compute Shader
	5	• New DirectX 11 Features For The Compute Shader    - Explicit Thread Dispatch    - Random Access I/O (Scatter)    - Interthread Communications That Use Locally Shared Registers    - Ability To Read And Sample DirectX Data Objects    - Atomic Operators On Shared Memory Locations
	6	• Supported Configurations For The Compute Shader • Target Applications For The Compute Shader
	7	• 3D Graphics Improvements In Direct3D 11    - Use of multiple CPU cores    - Tessellation    - High-level shading language    - Cross-platform development with the XBox 360 platform
	8	• Additional Direct3D 11 Features    - Improved Texture Compression    - Shader Model 5.0    - Stream Output Flexibility    - Depth Buffer Capabilities
	9	• Multi-GPU Support    - Homogenous Configurations    - Heterogenous Configurations
	10	• Linked Display Adapters • Multi-GPU & Aero Glass • Other Microsoft Scoops!

 

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Date	Revision	Revision History
13-06-2009	1.0	Initial Release.
21-09-2009	2.0	Added two new pages on the improved Multi-GPU support in Windows 7.