Evaluating the Performance of SPDK-based io uring and AIO Block Device

Abstract

Abstract: In the context of contemporary data processing and storage, this article examines the performance of asynchronous I/O interfaces that are provided by the Linux Kernel. Specifically, this study utilizes an SPDK-based block device module of io uring and AIO which offers features like request queueing and lockless queues. Our benchmarks comparing io uring and aio performance revealed an interesting dichotomy in their handling of random I/O patterns. Both approaches exhibited similar performance trends for random-read operations, showcasing a clear benefit from increasing the IO queue depth. This suggests both methods efficiently leverage parallel processing to boost read throughput. However, the story flips for random-write operations. Unlike read workloads, increasing queue depth for writes yielded no performance improvement. This increase significantly inflated latency, introducing undesired delays.