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# First Look at New D3D12 Enhanced Barriers
Thu
09
Dec 2021
This will be pretty advanced or at least intermediate article. It assumes you know Direct3D 12 API. Some references to Vulkan may also appear. I am writing it because I just found out that yesterday Microsoft announced an upcoming big change in D3D12: Enhanced Barriers. It will be an addition to the API that provides a new way to do barriers. Considering my professional interests, this looks very important to me and also quite revolutionary. This article summarizes my first look and my thoughts about this new addition to the API or, speaking in terms of modern internet, my "unboxing" or "reaction" ;)
Bill Kristiansen, the author of the article linked above, written that currently only the software-simulated WARP device supports the new enhanced barriers. Support in real GPU drivers will come at later time. The new barriers can replace the old way of doing them, but both will still be available and can also be mixed in one application. Which means this is not as big revolution to turn our DirectX development upside down - we can switch to them gradually. For now we can just prepare ourselves for the future by studying the interface (which I do in this article) and testing some code using WARP device.
UPDATE 2021-12-10: I just learned that Microsoft actually did publish a documentation of the new API: Enhanced Barriers @ DirectX-Specs, so I recommend to go see it before reading this article.