Ubuntu 21.10 Performance Continues In The Right Direction For AArch64

As a good sign ahead of the important Ubuntu 22.04 LTS release in the spring, Ubuntu 21.10 further ups the 64-bit ARM (AArch64) performance. Here is a look at some of the gains in going from Ubuntu 21.04 to the recently released Ubuntu 21.10.

Similar to the improvements seen on x86_64 and especially the much better RISC-V performance, Ubuntu 21.10 is doing real well on AArch64 too. Ubuntu 21.04 already tended to be measurably faster than Ubuntu 20.04 LTS while now with Ubuntu 21.10, the performance continues increasing ahead of Ubuntu 22.04 LTS.

With Ubuntu 21.10 is the shift to GCC 11 as the default system compiler and making use of Linux 5.13 most notably. Ubuntu 22.04 LTS will continue using GCC 11 while having a newer version of the Linux kernel and other newer package upgrades. But even where we are at today with Ubuntu 21.10 is quite good.

I ran some Ubuntu 21.04 vs. 21.10 comparison benchmarks using Ampere's Mount Jade reference server with dual 128-core Ampere Altra Max processors. The only change made between tests was the Ubuntu installation and testing each time at the operating system defaults. Long story short, Ubuntu 21.10 is providing some additional uplift.