AES encryption   Performance has been improved when using AES to encrypt client/server communications and to encrypt database files on Intel/AMD processors for Windows and Linux. You can check if an enhanced implementation of the AES algorithm is being used by querying the IsAesniAvailable database server property. See IsAesniAvailable server property.

Adding columns to tables   Performance has been improved when using the ALTER TABLE...ADD COLUMN statement. In most situations where the default value can be evaluated to a constant, the ALTER TABLE statement should run significantly faster than in previous releases. You must upgrade existing version 11 or later databases to be able to use this feature. You must rebuild version 10 and earlier databases to use this feature.