Category: Technica Aquarius

Enlarge / You’ll need an NVMe SSD to use DirectStorage on Windows. (credit: Getty Images)

PC games can now use DirectStorage, a DirectX 12 Ultimate API that Microsoft announced in 2020. The feature is supposed to bring faster loading times and improved textures and draw distances.

The Xbox Series X/S already uses DirectStorage, and in June, Microsoft said it would bring the feature to Windows 11. The storage acceleration API should improve gameplay by bringing instant asset introduction and enabling more vivid virtual landscapes. It works by sending data directly from an NVMe SSD to the graphics card, skipping the CPU and leveraging PCIe 3.0 or PCIe 4.0 speeds, depending on the system.

In a developer blog post today, Microsoft said it is moving DirectStorage out of developer preview and making it available via a public SDK.

Enlarge / Microsoft says it sees two clear peaks at the ends of a wire, with a nice energy separation between those and any other energy states. (credit: Microsoft)

So far, two primary quantum computing technologies have been commercialized. One type of hardware, called a transmon, involves superconducting wire loops linked to a resonator; it is used by companies like Google, IBM, and Rigetti. Companies like Quantinuum and IonQ have instead used individual ions held in light traps. At the moment, both technologies are in an awkward place. They’ve clearly been demonstrated to work, but they need some significant scaling and quality improvements before they can perform useful computations.

It may be a bit surprising to see that Microsoft is committed to an alternative technology called “topological qubits.” This technology is far enough behind other options that the company just announced it has worked out the physics to make a qubit. To understand Microsoft’s approach better, Ars talked to Microsoft engineer Chetan Nayak about the company’s progress and plans.

The foundation of a qubit

Microsoft is starting behind some competitors because the basic physics of its system weren’t entirely figured out. The company’s system relies on the controlled production of a “Majorana particle,” something that was only demonstrated to exist within the last decade (and even then, its discovery has been controversial).

Enlarge (credit: NurPhoto | Getty Images)

Big banks fear that Swift faces a growing threat of Russian cyberattacks after seven of the country’s lenders were kicked off the global payments messaging system over the weekend.

VTB, Russia’s second-biggest bank, and Promsvyazbank, which finances Russia’s war machine, were among the lenders removed on Saturday from Swift as part of the West’s sanctions campaign against Moscow in response to its invasion of Ukraine.

Senior executives responsible for cybersecurity at several banks told the Financial Times that the threat to Swift, which enables banks to send trillions in payments across borders every day, could escalate if more of Russia’s lenders are expelled from the system.