F2FS Gets Improved Read/Write Performance

The Samsung-developed Flash-Friendly File-System (F2FS) will exhibit improved read/write performance for some workloads with the Linux 3.14 kernel.

Jaegeuk Kim, one of the main F2FS file-system developers at Samsung, sent in the Git pull request a short time ago for the 3.14 merge window improvements. F2FS in Linux 3.14 will add support for new sysfs entries to allow tuning of the file-system at run-time. F2FS in Linux 3.14 additionally starts to support in-line data.

The other big win for this still-experimental Linux file-system is improved read/write performance for some workloads through refactoring of bio-related operations. The direct I/O path has been enhanced while reworking the code.

There's also several bug-fixes included with this F2FS file-system update. The Git pull request that details all of this latest work can be found on the Linux kernel mailing list.

While Samsung's ultimate intentions for the file-system remain unclear, they've been investing a lot into F2FS. Our most recent performance benchmarks of the Flash-Friendly File-System can be found in our eight-way Linux 3.13 kernel FS comparison. New benchmarks of F2FS from Linux 3.14 will come as the new kernel stabilizes.