In addition to the recent Linux kernel patches out of Intel for 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 this Linux kernel mailing list thread .