Overview
- The public preview adds Zstd to DirectStorage’s multi-tier decompression framework on Windows, letting developers choose CPU or GPU paths per workload.
- Microsoft open-sourced a Zstd GPU decompression compute shader on the DirectStorage GitHub, initially tuned for 256KB content chunks and still in active development.
- Microsoft’s benchmarks show GDeflate remains preferable for GPU-handled loading, while Zstd offers roughly a 2% better compression ratio and suits CPU-bound cases.
- AMD, NVIDIA, Intel, and Qualcomm say they are collaborating on Zstd support and plan driver-level optimizations in the second half of 2026 or by year-end.
- DirectStorage 1.4 also introduces the Game Asset Conditioning Library to improve compressibility at build time and adds D3D12 CreatorID support to aid driver scheduling of decompression alongside rendering.