IO_uring Will Be Even Faster With Linux 5.12

IO_uring has been one of the greatest Linux kernel innovations in recent times. IO_uring for more efficient asynchronous I/O has continued getting faster and introducing new features over the past two years and for the upcoming Linux 5.12 cycle will be even faster.

Linux block maintainer and lead IO_uring developer Jens Axboe has teased that this I/O interface for Linux 5.12 is becoming even faster with a number pegging it at about 10% faster compared to the prior kernel. A 10% speed-up is sizable considering how much faster already IO_uring has evolved on prior kernels for yielding greater performance not only for disk I/O but of growing interest for network I/O and also experimenting with new ioctls being built over IO_uring.

This GitHub issue tracker comparing the IO_uring performance to Epoll has some of the latest numbers.

I guess 5.12 tldr is that we improved perf by 10%. Now we just have to find 10% more for 5.13, and so on. https://t.co/z8OBoQIwKY

— Jens Axboe (@axboe) February 12, 2021

We'll have up some fresh benchmarks after the Linux 5.12 merge window.