Linux Achieves 5.1M IOPS Per-Core With AMD Zen 3 + Intel Optane

Written by Michael Larabel in Linux Storage on 30 September 2021 at 09:53 AM EDT. 27 Comments
LINUX STORAGE
Linux kernel developers have been working tirelessly to squeeze more performance out of IO_uring and the block / I/O code in general. IO_uring lead developer Jens Axboe who also serves as the Linux block subsystem's maintainer (among other roles and major contributions over the years) has used his system as a baseline for evaluating such kernel improvements. He's now moved to using AMD Zen 3 while sticking to Intel Optane storage and is seeing a mighty speed boost out of AMD's latest processors.

Rather than talking in the 3.5~3.8M IOPS per-core range for evaluating kernel improvements, he is now at over 5 million IOPS per core by upgrading to AMD Zen 3 hardware.

His system up to this point for doing the major Linux I/O testing was an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X with Intel Optane Gen2 storage. He has now moved to using an AMD Ryzen 9 5950X with Intel Optane Gen2.

The Linux IOPS per-core performance for his new baseline is now well above five million.... 5.1M IOPS is what he is seeing out of his new configuration at this point in Linux kernel development. This upgrade to AMD Zen 3 is now pushing the limits of the underlying Optane storage itself.
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Michael Larabel is the principal author of Phoronix.com and founded the site in 2004 with a focus on enriching the Linux hardware experience. Michael has written more than 20,000 articles covering the state of Linux hardware support, Linux performance, graphics drivers, and other topics. Michael is also the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, Phoromatic, and OpenBenchmarking.org automated benchmarking software. He can be followed via Twitter, LinkedIn, or contacted via MichaelLarabel.com.

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