I was referring to memory bandwidth and processing bandwidth, not download bandwidth. Re-reading I can see how that is confusing. It was also the base type for

I was referring to memory bandwidth and processing bandwidth, not download bandwidth. Re-reading I can see how that is confusing. It was also the base type for all DirectX interfaces. It effectively provides type info for a binary blob with implicit version information that could be used for extremely robust runtime data-typing. However there's all kinds of overhead associated with it, especially if the interface needs to be parsed constantly.