16:34Machine-translated from Azerbaijani by AIRead in Azerbaijani
New Patches Cut Linux Kernel Build Time from 22 Seconds to 15
Building the Linux kernel from scratch could soon take less than 10 seconds. New software patches reduced the time from 22 seconds to 15 seconds on a powerful test computer. This accelerated the process by approximately 32%. Alongside powerful processors, improvements to the code by humans and artificial intelligence also played a role.
The test used the minimal default kernel configuration for x86-64 systems. Memory-management developer Lorenzo Stoakes addressed several issues slowing down the Kbuild code with the help of artificial intelligence and large language models. Following the latest patches, the kernel build was completed in 15 seconds. The changes also significantly reduced the time on less powerful processors. The test computer had 2 64-core AMD EPYC 9575F processors. The system operated with a total of 128 cores and 256 processing threads. It was equipped with 24 DDR5-6400 memory modules. Each module had a capacity of 64 GB. Files were stored on a Samsung PM1743 SSD. The drive had a capacity of 3.84 TB and used a PCIe 5.0 connection. The computer had a standard installation of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. A RAM disk, which could have artificially improved the result, was not used.
The more demanding allmodconfig mode enables thousands of drivers and subsystems. As a result, building the kernel takes considerably longer than with the minimal configuration. The new patches reduced this time from 169 seconds to 134 seconds. This shortened the full build process to 2 minutes and 14 seconds. The next goal is to reduce the minimal kernel build time to less than 10 seconds. It is expected that this could be achieved with AMD EPYC 9686F systems based on the Zen 6 architecture, MRDIMM memory, and PCIe Gen6 storage devices. However, there are no test results confirming this yet. Build times on ordinary desktop and laptop computers will be longer, depending on the processor.
The test used the minimal default kernel configuration for x86-64 systems. Memory-management developer Lorenzo Stoakes addressed several issues slowing down the Kbuild code with the help of artificial intelligence and large language models. Following the latest patches, the kernel build was completed in 15 seconds. The changes also significantly reduced the time on less powerful processors. The test computer had 2 64-core AMD EPYC 9575F processors. The system operated with a total of 128 cores and 256 processing threads. It was equipped with 24 DDR5-6400 memory modules. Each module had a capacity of 64 GB. Files were stored on a Samsung PM1743 SSD. The drive had a capacity of 3.84 TB and used a PCIe 5.0 connection. The computer had a standard installation of Ubuntu 26.04 LTS. A RAM disk, which could have artificially improved the result, was not used. The more demanding allmodconfig mode enables thousands of drivers and subsystems. As a result, building the kernel takes considerably longer than with the minimal configuration. The new patches reduced this time from 169 seconds to 134 seconds. This shortened the full build process to 2 minutes and 14 seconds. The next goal is to reduce the minimal kernel build time to less than 10 seconds. It is expected that this could be achieved with AMD EPYC 9686F systems based on the Zen 6 architecture, MRDIMM memory, and PCIe Gen6 storage devices. However, there are no test results confirming this yet. Build times on ordinary desktop and laptop computers will be longer, depending on the processor.