According to The Inquirer, the next release of Microsoft's multimedia application programming interface (API) for Windows known to all as DirectX will be version 9.0c, and not the 9.1 moniker previously believed/accepted for quite some time now.

"The next revision of the famous API will be no DirectX 9.1. And, in terms of new features, it won’t be a huge step that we saw with transition from DX 8.0 to 8.1.

9.0c will be matched with the Software Developers Kit 2004 update and it will have bug fixes that will improve [Pixel and Vertex Shaders 3.0].

We also expect it to enable 3.0’s higher lever shading language (HLSL) support in D3D - finally."

According to the article, the release of DirectX version 9.0c could possibly coincide with the annoucements of ATI's R420 and Nvidia's NV40 next-gen GPUs.