High-Performance DBMSs with io_uring: When and How to use it
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| Main Authors: | , , , , |
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| Format: | Preprint |
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2025
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| _version_ | 1866918245367283712 |
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| author | Jasny, Matthias El-Hindi, Muhammad Ziegler, Tobias Leis, Viktor Binnig, Carsten |
| author_facet | Jasny, Matthias El-Hindi, Muhammad Ziegler, Tobias Leis, Viktor Binnig, Carsten |
| contents | We study how modern database systems can leverage the Linux io_uring interface for efficient, low-overhead I/O. io_uring is an asynchronous system call batching interface that unifies storage and network operations, addressing limitations of existing Linux I/O interfaces. However, naively replacing traditional I/O interfaces with io_uring does not necessarily yield performance benefits. To demonstrate when io_uring delivers the greatest benefits and how to use it effectively in modern database systems, we evaluate it in two use cases: Integrating io_uring into a storage-bound buffer manager and using it for high-throughput data shuffling in network-bound analytical workloads. We further analyze how advanced io_uring features, such as registered buffers and passthrough I/O, affect end-to-end performance. Our study shows when low-level optimizations translate into tangible system-wide gains and how architectural choices influence these benefits. Building on these insights, we derive practical guidelines for designing I/O-intensive systems using io_uring and validate their effectiveness in a case study of PostgreSQL's recent io_uring integration, where applying our guidelines yields a performance improvement of 14%. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_04859 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2025 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | High-Performance DBMSs with io_uring: When and How to use it Jasny, Matthias El-Hindi, Muhammad Ziegler, Tobias Leis, Viktor Binnig, Carsten Databases We study how modern database systems can leverage the Linux io_uring interface for efficient, low-overhead I/O. io_uring is an asynchronous system call batching interface that unifies storage and network operations, addressing limitations of existing Linux I/O interfaces. However, naively replacing traditional I/O interfaces with io_uring does not necessarily yield performance benefits. To demonstrate when io_uring delivers the greatest benefits and how to use it effectively in modern database systems, we evaluate it in two use cases: Integrating io_uring into a storage-bound buffer manager and using it for high-throughput data shuffling in network-bound analytical workloads. We further analyze how advanced io_uring features, such as registered buffers and passthrough I/O, affect end-to-end performance. Our study shows when low-level optimizations translate into tangible system-wide gains and how architectural choices influence these benefits. Building on these insights, we derive practical guidelines for designing I/O-intensive systems using io_uring and validate their effectiveness in a case study of PostgreSQL's recent io_uring integration, where applying our guidelines yields a performance improvement of 14%. |
| title | High-Performance DBMSs with io_uring: When and How to use it |
| topic | Databases |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.04859 |