Someone moved three lines of code in Linux 7.2 and got a 5% storage speed boost
Someone moved three lines of code in Linux 7.2 and got a 5% storage speed boost
Publish Date: 2026-06-15 22:28:00
Source Domain: www.xda-developers.com
Summary
- Linux 7.2 gains ~5% IOPS on ext4/xfs from a tiny code change.
- Skipping an unnecessary iomap memset after iteration freed write bandwidth.
- Moving three lines to run post-iteration shows tiny edits can boost performance.
Ensuring your code is working at its utmost best can be pretty daunting if you’re not sure what to pull back, and by how much. However, sometimes the stars align, and you spot a really simple fix that significantly boosts your software’s speed. As good as that is, though, not many people can claim they sped up a process by 5% just by moving three chunks of code down by a few lines, which is exactly what one Linux engineer achieved with kernel version 7.2.
Linux 7.2 got a 5% storage speed boost by moving three lines of code
It was a very impactful move, but a move nonetheless
As spotted by Phoronix, this change was authored by Fengnan Chang and committed by Christian Brauner. In Brauner’s commit notes, he mentions the work that Chang had done to the kernel and how it helped flesh out Linux 7.2:
Skip the memset…
