Portions of DX 11.1 is being made available on Win 7

Windows 8 includes an updated “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” that supports Direct3D 11.1, updates Direct2D and DirectWrite, DXGI 1.2, and a revision of the Windows Imaging Component (WIC).

Portions of the “DirectX 11.1 Runtime” are being made available on Windows 7 Service Pack 1 via the Platform Update for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Service Pack 1 (KB 2670838) included with the Internet Explorer 10 Release Preview for Windows 7. This includes the updated components above, but is limited to WDDM 1.1 drivers on Windows 7.

KB 2670838 is installed as part of the IE10 Release Preview for Windows 7 download. It is also available as a standalone prerelease update.

Full technical details are in the process of being published to MSDN.