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DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) developed by Microsoft for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Windows. It acts as an intermediary that allows software to communicate directly with hardware like graphics and sound cards, which simplifies development by creating a universal language for different hardware components. This helps ensure that games and applications run properly across a wide range of PCs without needing to write specific drivers for each hardware model.

Key functions and components

Graphics: Provides APIs like Direct3D for 3D graphics, Direct2D for 2D graphics, and DirectWrite for text rendering.

Audio: Includes APIs for high-level and low-level audio control, such as XAudio2 and formerly DirectSound, to handle playback and recording.

Input: Historically included DirectInput for handling game controllers, though modern input from keyboards and mice is now typically handled differently.

Other: Newer components include DirectCompute for general-purpose computing on the GPU, DirectStorage for GPU-oriented file I/O, and DirectML for GPU-accelerated machine learning.