Initial F2FS File-System Results Are Impressive

Earlier this month Samsung introduced a new Linux file-system, F2FS, that was designed for mobile devices with flash memory. Initial testing of F2FS yields very positive results against EXT4 and NILFS2.

F2FS is the Flash-Friendly File-System and was designed around NAND flash memory storage characteristics and other future storage needs. F2FS is a log-structured file-system and exhibited much more hope than the previously-proposed LanyardFS.

While the ultimate future of Samsung's F2FS is unclear, initial testing by Sooman Jeong out of the ESOS Lab at Hanyang University show very positive results.

F2FS was tested from a desktop PC with an Intel Core i5 2500 CPU and then a Galaxy S3 running Android 4.0.4. F2FS beat EXT4 and NILFS2 in random and sequential buffered writes. F2FS also won with a write + fsync test. The mounting time was also measured. EXT4 was faster at mounting than F2FS, but the Samsung file-system did mount faster than NILFS2. In follow-up testing, F2FS also won with random reads.

These initial Linux F2FS file-system test results were shared on the kernel mailing list.