Chromebooks Switching Over To The BFQ I/O Scheduler

On Chromebooks when moving to the latest Chrome OS that switches over to a Linux 4.19 based kernel, BFQ has become the default I/O scheduler.

BFQ has been maturing nicely and as of late there's been an uptick in interest around this I/O scheduler with some also calling for it to be used by default in distributions. Google has decided BFQ is attractive enough to enable by default for Chromebooks to provide better responsiveness.

In our own tests, particularly with slower storage mediums, BFQ delivers good results on recent kernel releases. BFQ aims for low latency on interactive and soft real-time tasks while still being capable of achieving high throughput, among other benefits.

#BFQ is the new default #IO scheduler in #Chromebooks running chromeos-4.19 kernels! Check out new performance in this demo: https://t.co/0kDSmastLl #opensource #collaborativeengineering pic.twitter.com/cITx41sOU5

— Linaro (@LinaroOrg) August 14, 2019

Below is a demo by BFQ developer Paolo Valente on the responsiveness of BFQ on Chromebooks.