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Windows 10's May 2020 update has added this feature in the advanced graphics settings although it's still an optional, opt-in feature at this stage.
In the simplest of terms - Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling helps produce more efficient workload distribution, which means improved performance and decreased latency.
GPU scheduling has been introduced to Windows 14 years ago, and it's a crude system that worked well back when GPU applications were handled in full screen and one at a time. In the meantime, GPU utilisation exploded and the need for a more refined system produced the WDDM GPU scheduler, the coordination of which was handled by a high priority CPU thread.
Such a system was not without its drawbacks though, increased latency being the most glaring one. "User input is picked up by the CPU during "frame N+1" but is not rendered by the GPU until the following frame", Microsoft explained.
Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling, on the other hand, promises great improvement on this front.
"Windows continues to control prioritization and decide which applications have priority among contexts. We offload high-frequency tasks to the GPU scheduling processor, handling quanta management and context switching of various GPU engines", they wrote, likening the step to rebuilding the foundation of a house while still living in it.
Microsoft will be revealing exactly which GPUs will support this at a later date, but they did say that more recent GPUs will be okay. There will have to be a period of testing and working with GPU manufacturers, hence the opt-in part, but the company is quite optimistic as to the end result.
"The goal of the first phase of hardware-accelerated GPU scheduling is to modernize a fundamental pillar of the graphics subsystem and to set the stage for things to come… but that’s going to be a story for another time", they wrote, hinting at big plans for Hardware-Accelerated GPU Scheduling.
You can find the full blog post here.
