Performance Optimizations, Other "Big" Work For Linux 5.16 To The Block Code

Linux block subsystem maintainer and IO_uring lead developer Jens Axboe has prepared his various pull requests ahead of the upcoming Linux 5.16 merge window.

Axboe calls it "a big one" for the changes he oversees going into Linux 5.16.

Wrote up 10 pull requests today, one for 5.15-final and 9 for the upcoming merge window. This will be a big one... Hope Linus doesn't delay the merge window at this point.

— Jens Axboe (@axboe) October 29, 2021

Notably it includes many of his recent performance optimizations around IO_uring and related block code.

Over the past month Axboe took the Linux I/O performance from seeing around ~5M IOPS per-core at the end of September to now around 10M IOPS per-core. Many of those optimizations will be part of the upcoming Linux 5.16 kernel.

He continues to work on his Linux I/O optimizations via the perf-wip branch. As you can see, many of the commits have been queued up for inclusion in Linux 5.16 but there still are some more recent optimizations that aren't part of these initial pull requests.

In any case, there is a lot happening in the Linux block subsystem right now and Linux 5.16 will be another nice step forward especially around performance along with IO_uring enhancements and more.