How DirectStorage 1.4 eliminates game loading times using your GPU

Summary

Direct Storage 1.4 is a Microsoft technology that optimizes the flow of data between the SSD and the graphics card, allowing loading times in games – particularly in open-world titles – to be almost completely eliminated. At the heart of this version is support for the Zstandard codec (Zstd for short), an extremely efficient compression method. Normally, the central processing unit (CPU) has to laboriously decompress game data before it can be displayed. With Direct Storage 1.4, this task shifts directly to the graphics card (GPU), which can perform the decompression much faster using Zstd…

Description from Pcworld.