Some Early Tests Of Linux 4.18 On AMD EPYC

With the Linux 4.18 kernel development settling nicely, I've been ramping up tests lately on the Linux Git state. For those curious, here are some fresh benchmarks using the current AMD flagship EPYC processor of Linux 4.16, 4.17, and 4.18 Git.

Via the Phoronix Test Suite I ran some fresh Linux 4.16 vs. 4.17 vs. 4.18 Git benchmarks on the AMD EPYC 7601 housed within the wonderful Tyan 2U server platform.

The only thing being changed out each time was the kernel version via the Ubuntu Mainline Kernel PPA.

SQLite was one of the rare I/O tests showing a performance improvement on the newer kernel code.



Some other I/O tests were leaning slightly higher with Linux 4.18 on this Intel Optane 900p SSD, but for the most part the I/O performance was flat from 4.16 to 4.18 on this system.






Most of the CPU/system benchmarks were flat on the tested kernels.

A 4.17 regression in the boot time appears to be under control with Linux 4.18.


Overall, not too much eventful going on in the tests run.

In the Stress-NG synthetic kernel benchmark, the semaphores performance appears to be slower.

Though the context switching performance measured by Stress-NG is improving.

Additional data is available via this OpenBenchmarking.org result file. For additional reference, via LinuxBenchmarking.com continues to be bi-daily benchmarks of the Linux kernel Git code on Xeon, Core, Atom, and Ryzen hardware too. Our larger and more focused performance tests on Linux 4.18 will be coming up in multi-page articles soon on Phoronix. If you are not yet familiar with the changes of this next kernel, see my Linux 4.18 kernel overview.