DirectX Developer Blog

Today, we are pleased to announce that Shader Model 6.9 and other features have been officially released with Agility SDK 1.619 and complementary DXC 1.9.2602.16. Many of these features have been in preview status since 2025. Simultaneously, we are releasing a handful of new preview features in a separate preview runtime: Agility SDK 1.719-preview. Overview The post Announcing Shader Model 6.9 Retail and New D3D12 Improvements appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

Introducing Fence Barriers We are excited to share the preview release of Fence Barriers (Tier-1), a new capability now available in AgilitySDK 1.719-preview (https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx12agility/). Fence Barriers expand on Enhanced Barriers to provide support for signaling and waiting on fences during command buffer execution. This provides more flexibility to synchronize between more distant dependencies in the command stream and The post Fence Barriers: Fine-Grained GPU Synchronization in Direct3D 12 appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

Now officially released, Shader Execution Reordering (SER) is an addition to DirectX Raytracing that enables application shader code inform hardware how to find coherency across rays so they can be sorted to execute better in parallel.  SER support is a required feature in Shader Model 6.9, meaning all drivers must accept shader code using SER.  The post D3D12 Shader Execution Reordering appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

DirectX Raytracing (DXR) now supports Opacity Micromaps (OMMs), enabling hardware to handle alpha tested geometry more efficiently than relying only on costly AnyHit shader invocations. At GDC 2025 DXR 1.2 was announced including OMMs, and you can see it discussed in this: GDC DirectX State Of The Union YouTube Recording. In the video, Remedy showed raytracing The post D3D12 Opacity Micromaps appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

The HLSL team is excited to announce the formation of Ecma Technical Committee 57; a committee to standardize the High Level Shading Language. The formation of this committee marks an important milestone in HLSL’s development and strengthens Microsoft’s commitment to HLSL as a cross-platform language, built in collaboration with equal partners across the industry. All The post Standardizing HLSL appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

DirectX12 shipped in 2015 with a simple goal: give developers more control so games run faster, look better, and scale across Windows PC and console. Over the last decade, DirectX 12 delivered on that promise. We added features and made it easier for developers to focus on gameplay & graphics by providing more flexibility and The post Celebrating 10 Years of DirectX 12 appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

We’re excited to share all DirectX Graphics Samples have been updated to use the latest DirectX 12 Agility SDK. What’s New: Agility SDK Integration: All samples now leverage the latest Agility SDK for improved compatibility and faster adoption of new DirectX capabilities. Enhanced Barriers Support: Three samples (Multithreading, Small Resources, and nBodyGravity) have been upgraded The post DirectX Graphics Samples Updated to Agility SDK + Enhanced Barriers examples appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

We are pleased to announce the retail release of AgilitySDK 1.618, available on Agility SDK Downloads today! This release promotes our 1.716 features out of preview and also introduces support for the recently announced advanced shader delivery feature. Advanced Shader Delivery Advanced shader delivery is a new feature that distributes precompiled shaders when downloading a game, eliminating The post Agility SDK 1.618: Advanced Shader Delivery and 1.716 out of preview appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

Do you want to be a part of the Silicon, Graphics, Media and AI (SiGMA) platform team? We are hiring for multiple positions – if you’re interested in knowing more about opportunities in SiGMA, please see the below for more details!   Core Platform Driver The Core Platform Driver team is seeking talented engineers who The post The Silicon, Graphics, Media and AI (SiGMA) team is hiring! appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.

Direct3D Cooperative Vector is Evolving DirectX continues to evolve to support the growing demands of AI and machine learning workloads. As part of this effort, we plan to introduce an expanded suite of linear algebra capabilities in a future Shader Model release, unlocking even more robust GPU acceleration for bedrock AI/ML computations within the graphics pipeline.  This The post Shader Model 6.9 and The Future of Cooperative Vector appeared first on DirectX Developer Blog.