According to latest update of DirectXMath 3.10, which will be included in an upcoming Windows 10 SDK for the Creator's Update in 2017, the DX12 will support the uArch ARMv8.
Here it is the log of the update:
- Added XMVectorSum for horizontal adds
- ARMv8 intrinsics use for ARM64 platform (division, rounding, half-precision conversion)
- Added SSE3 codepaths using opt-in _XM_SSE3_INTRINSICS_
- XMVectorRound fix for no-intrinsics to match round-to-nearest (even)
- XMStoreFloat3SE fix when max channel isn't a perfect power of 2
- constexpr conformance fix and workaround for compiler bug in VS 2015 RTM
- Remove support for VS 2012 compilers
- Remove __vector4i deprecated type
What does this mean? We don’t exactly know, but we can make some assumptions:
- Qualcomm collaborates with Microsoft to support Windows 10, so the latest Adreno GPUs could handle DX12 games. This means that we may see, in the near future, some cheap console based on a Qualcomm SoC and Windows 10 (On the other hand, Nintendo uses a Tegra SoC in Switch);
- K12 could be a viable solution to equip a future console (Next XBox?). Today GCN is the main GPU Arch in console market, and the uArch K12 will be more powerful than Zen, according to Jim Keller words;
- Microsoft wants to nip Android in Console market in the bud, and to achieve that goal it has to support the main ARM companies, like Qualcomm, MediaTek and AMD.
Little hint: last time Microsoft added a new exotic intrinsic in DX SDK, XBOX switched from Power to x86 ISA.