APIs may be standardized, then may be tightly specified or they may be completely propritary.ĭirectX is a specified API, the specification was written down by Microsoft. That is, because drivers must be able to communicate with hardware.ĭrivers communicate with regular programs, the so called User Space through APIs. Drivers run in priviledged mode, which means, address space protection doesn't apply to them. The pieces of software responsible for channeling access to hardware are called drivers. You are wrong because nothing and nobody prevents you from implementing another track for accelerated hardware access. That means Direct X is the only sure way to achieve direct(ish) hardware access. DirectX is a API for accelerated hardware access, not THE (one and only) one. In fact no operating system with memory protection does.Īnd yes, DirectX was created to offer a API for accelerated access to certain kinds of hardware. You're right that Windows didn't offer DOS like direct hardware access. From what I understand, because Windows didn't offer DOS like direct hardware access, Direct X was created.

Directx opengl in windows 10