Driver design guides for display, graphics, and compute accelerator devices

The following design guides are for developers of display, graphics, and compute accelerator drivers on Windows. For information about available "Video driver samples", see Windows driver samples.

• Windows Display Driver Model (WDDM)

  • WDDM is the driver architecture available starting with Windows Vista. Drivers that adhere to WDDM run on Windows Vista and later.
  • For compute accelerator drivers, use the Microsoft Computer Driver Model (MCDM), which is a subset of WDDM 2.0+.

• Legacy: Windows 2000 Display Driver Model (XDDM)

  XDDM was the display and graphics driver architecture available for Windows 2000 through Windows Vista and Windows 7 only.