The Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform (WARP10) is a software rasterizer device that is a component of Windows Graphics

DirectX

Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with Direct, such as Direct3D, DirectDraw, DirectMusic, DirectPlay,...

 runtime in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2

Windows Server 2008 R2 is a server operating system produced by Microsoft. It was released to manufacturing on July 22, 2009 and launched on October 22, 2009. According to the Windows Server Team blog, the retail availability was September 14, 2009. It is built on Windows NT 6.1, the same core...

, as well as Windows Vista

Windows Vista

Windows Vista is an operating system released in several variations developed by Microsoft for use on personal computers, including home and business desktops, laptops, tablet PCs, and media center PCs...

 and Windows Server 2008 (with Platform Update installed).

WARP can be used when no compatible hardware is available, in kernel mode applications or in a headless

Headless system

A headless system is a computer system or device that has been configured to operate without a monitor , keyboard and mouse...

 environment, or for remote rendering of Direct2D

Direct2D

Direct2D is a 2D and vector graphics application programming interface designed by Microsoft and implemented in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, and also Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 and Platform Update Supplement for Windows Vista and for Windows Server 2008 & KB2505189 update...

/DirectWrite

DirectWrite

DirectWrite is a text-layout and glyph-rendering API by Microsoft. It was designed to replace GDI/GDI+ and Uniscribe for screen-oriented rendering and was shipped with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2, as well as Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008 DirectWrite is a text-layout and...

 for Remote Desktop Connection clients.

WARP is a full-featured Direct3D

Direct3D

Direct3D is part of Microsoft's DirectX application programming interface . Direct3D is available for Microsoft Windows operating systems , and for other platforms through the open source software Wine. It is the base for the graphics API on the Xbox and Xbox 360 console systems...

 10.1 renderer device with performance on par with current low-level graphics cards such as Intel GMA 3000 , when running on multi-core CPUs. To achieve this level of rendering performance, WARP employs advanced techniques such as just-in-time compilation

Just-in-time compilation

In computing, just-in-time compilation , also known as dynamic translation, is a method to improve the runtime performance of computer programs. Historically, computer programs had two modes of runtime operation, either interpreted or static compilation...

 to x86 machine code

Machine code

Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions executed directly by a computer's central processing unit. Each instruction performs a very specific task, typically either an operation on a unit of data Machine code or machine language is a system of impartible instructions...

 and support for advanced vector extensions such as SSE2

SSE2

SSE2, Streaming SIMD Extensions 2, is one of the Intel SIMD processor supplementary instruction sets first introduced by Intel with the initial version of the Pentium 4 in 2001. It extends the earlier SSE instruction set, and is intended to fully supplant MMX. Intel extended SSE2 to create SSE3...

 and SSE4.1.

WARP supports Direct3D 11 runtime and is compatible with .