At Microsoft Build, the DirectX team announced that GPU hardware acceleration is coming to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL2).

WSL is the environment for users to run Linux applications on their Windows PC. You can test your Linux workloads locally using the same native Linux tools, and in response to popular demand, Linux applications and tools can now benefit from GPU acceleration.

Microsoft has implemented this with a new kernel mode driver (KMD) for Linux (Dxgkrnl) that exposes the /dev/dxg device to user mode Linux with a set of IOCTL that closely mimic the native WDDN D3DKMT kernel service layer on Windows. This Linux KMD connects through the VM Bus to the Windows GPU KMD to communicate with the GPU hardware - whether one GPU or multiple.

Learn more from the Microsoft DirectX blog.