Intel Sees a 3888.9% Performance Improvement in the Linux Kernel - From One Line of Code

An anonymous reader shared this report from Phoronix:


Intel's Linux kernel test robot has reported a 3888.9% performance improvement in the mainline Linux kernel as of this past week...

Intel thankfully has the resources to maintain this automated service for per-kernel commit/patch testing and has been maintaining their public kernel test robot for years now to help catch performance changes both positive and negative to the Linux kernel code. The commit in question causing this massive uplift to performance is mm, mmap: limit THP alignment of anonymous mappings to PMD-aligned sizes. The patch message confirms it will fix some prior performance regressions and deliver some major uplift in specialized cases...

That mmap patch merged last week affects just one line of code.

This week the Register also reported that Linus Torvalds revised a previously-submitted security tweak that addressed Spectre and Meltdown security holes, writing in his commit message that "The kernel test robot reports a 2.6 percent improvement in the per_thread_ops benchmark."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.