Linux MGLRU Results Are Looking Great On Ampere Altra

One of the best features to make it into the mainline Linux kernel this year is MGLRU as the Multi-Gen LRU for overhauling the kernel's page reclamation code. The MGLRU code that premiered in Linux 6.1 has been showing off very well in a variety of benchmarks.

Most of the benchmarks of MGLRU have been on x86_64 hardware given its popularity but there has also been many tests of the Multi-Gen LRU on embedded Arm hardware too given the limited memory capacities. As another interesting target, Yu Zhao of Google has shared some benchmarks of Ampere Altra AArch64 server processors with MGLRU on/off.

With some Node.js testing and using Ampere Altra server processors, with MGLRU enabled Yu Zhao found an 88% improvement in throughput / number of requests being sustained. One socket saw a 55% boost and the other a 98% boost in this Node.js testing while also helping the latency too.

Those interested in these MGLRU benchmarks on the Linux AArch64 server hardware can find them on the kernel mailing list. While MGLRU premiered in Linux 6.1, further improvements are still being worked on for the Linux kernel.