News: 0001585162

  ARM Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his life (Terry Pratchett, Jingo)

New Linux Kernel Patches From Intel Delivering +18% Database Performance

([Linux Kernel] 5 Hours Ago Linux MM CID Patches)


In addition to the recent Linux kernel patches out of Intel for [1]Cache Aware Scheduling for better performance , separately, another interesting new patch series was sent out this week for the Linux kernel. The patches rework some low-level Linux kernel memory management code and at least for database workloads the early benchmarks are showing possible 14~18% faster database performance with PostgreSQL.

Intel Fellow Thomas Gleixner of Intel-owned Linutronix posted an interesting patch series this week. The 19 patches are a rewrite of Linux's memory management subsystem's memory-mapped concurrency ID (MM CID) code.

Long story short for those not concerned about the low-level, inner-workings of the Linux memory management code but the end-user impact, the early benchmarks of this are showing a very positive improvement:

Up to 14% faster PostgreSQL performance with sysbench and an additional 3% gain also possible with another code branch being tested.

In a thread-create teardown micro-benchmark was as much as a 30% improvement over the upstream Linux kernel code.

Additional performance benchmark data from these code branches are being sought for seeing other possible gains or areas for improvement still. If I can find the time, I'll be spinning up some benchmarks of the proposed code soon.

Those interested can find the work via [2]this Linux kernel mailing list thread .



[1] https://www.phoronix.com/news/Cache-Aware-Scheduling-Go

[2] https://lore.kernel.org/lkml/20251015164952.694882104@linutronix.de/


They are fools that think that wealth or women or strong drink or even
drugs can buy the most in effort out of the soul of a man. These things offer
pale pleasures compared to that which is greatest of them all, that task which
demands from him more than his utmost strength, that absorbs him, bone and
sinew and brain and hope and fear and dreams -- and still calls for more.
They are fools that think otherwise. No great effort was ever bought.
No painting, no music, no poem, no cathedral in stone, no church, no state was
ever raised into being for payment of any kind. No parthenon, no Thermopylae
was ever built or fought for pay or glory; no Bukhara sacked, or China ground
beneath Mongol heel, for loot or power alone. The payment for doing these
things was itself the doing of them.
To wield oneself -- to use oneself as a tool in one's own hand -- and
so to make or break that which no one else can build or ruin -- THAT is the
greatest pleasure known to man! To one who has felt the chisel in his hand
and set free the angel prisoned in the marble block, or to one who has felt
sword in hand and set homeless the soul that a moment before lived in the body
of his mortal enemy -- to those both come alike the taste of that rare food
spread only for demons or for gods."
-- Gordon R. Dickson, "Soldier Ask Not"