• AI Helped Uncover A “50-80x Improvement” For Linux’s IO_uring Linux block maintainer and IO_uring lead developer Jens Axboe recently was debugging some slowdowns in the AHCI/SCSI code with IO_uring usage. • When turning to Claude AI to help in sorting through the issue, patches were devised that can deliver up to a “literally yield a 50-80x improvement on the io_uring side for idle systems.” The code is on its way to QEMU. • Last week Jens Axboe posted a patch series of these IO_uring fixes where he explained: The real kicker beyond the 50-80x improvement for IO_uring is that the main patch is just one line of actual code (plus a few lines of comments). • The one line avoids the ppoll() sleeping up to 499ms before submitting. • Axboe also posted on X around this “60-80x improvement in performance” for IO_uring as well as his adventures with using AI (Claude) for dealing with this issue. • In the process Claude ended up partially destroying his virtual disk for the VM used for testing but was then able to recover.
Article Summaries:
- Linux block maintainer Jens Axboe has identified a one‑line patch that can boost IO_uring performance by 50‑80× on idle systems. While debugging slowdowns in AHCI/SCSI code, he used Claude AI to analyze the issue, leading to a fix that eliminates a ppoll() sleep of up to 499 ms before submitting I/O. The patch series, posted on X, shows the improvement and notes that the AI also caused a temporary loss of a virtual disk, which was later recovered. Both patches are now staged for inclusion in QEMU, marking a significant efficiency gain for Linux block I/O.
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