Microsoft has officially revealed the name for the next version of its DirectX graphics API, and it"s a traditional change. In a page on the DirectX blog, Microsoft has confirmed that it will be branded as DirectX 12.
The page also hints that more information on the API will be revealed on March 20th as part of the 2014 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The appearance of logos for AMD, Intel, NVIDIA and Qualcomm also hint that DirectX 12 will be compatible with their products.
A few days ago, rumors hit the Internet that the next version of DirectX will enable developers to have low-level access to PC hardware. If true, this would be similar to what AMD has for its own Mantle API, which launched a few weeks ago as a graphics driver for its Radeon line of GPUs.
DirectX 11 was the last major version of the API, and was released alongside the launch of Windows 7 in 2009. Microsoft has released two minor updates since then; DirectX 11.1 for Windows 7, 8 and RT in 2012, and DirectX 11.2 for Windows 8.1 and 8.1 RT in 2013. If Microsoft follows its normal pattern, DirectX 12 might not be officially released until the launch of Windows 9, which is not expected until spring 2015.
Source: Microsoft | Image via Microsoft