DirectX Graphics Infrastructure

DirectX Graphics Infrastructure is a user-mode component of Microsoft Windows which provides a mapping between particular graphics APIs such as Direct3D 10.0 and above and the graphics kernel, which in turn interfaces with the user-mode Windows Display Driver Model driver. DXGI provides objects for tasks such as enumerating graphics adapters and monitors, enumerating display modes, choosing buffer formats, sharing resources between processes, and presenting rendered frames to a window or monitor for display.
Both Direct3D 10 and OpenGL applications in Windows Vista work through DXGI.
Windows 8 introduced a notably useful DXGI-based API called Desktop Duplication API for hardware accelerated video capture using DirectX. Using it with a hardware video encoder provides a low-latency, high-performance solution for screen capturing and encoding, freeing up the CPU for gaming or other tasks such as Miracast screencasting, streaming, remote desktop scenarios.
DXGI 1.1 added surface sharing between the various Windows graphics API. The newest version is DXGI 1.6, introduced with Windows 10 Creators Update and updated with Windows 10 Fall Creators Update.
DXGI 2 preview was released alongside the Oculus Rift SDK, containing improvements for stereoscopic rendering.