The slab pull request was just merged for Linux 7.4. For end users nothing too incredibly exciting but there is one change that does yield a 24% throughput improvement in a benchmark exercising the kernel's memory management subsystem.

The most exciting aspect of the slab updates for Linux 7.4 is improving the performance of the sheaf prefill API for the kernel's sheaves code:

"- Performance improvement of the sheaf prefill API, by allowing the barn to hold a partial sheaf and refilling sheaves from the barn. This improves will-it-scale mmap1 throughput by 24% on the maple_node cache. (Hao Li)"

This is a change that was previously on my radar and covered within MM Change Slated For Linux 7.4 Yields +22904539.81% In One Metric, More Modest Wins In Others. Overall it amounts to a 24% throughput improvement for the will-it-scale benchmark exercising the kernel's memory management (MM) subsystem.

A nice win thanks to Linux developer Hao Li. The full list of slab changes merged for Linux 7.4 can be found via this pull.