Episode
Postgres is half as fast in Linux 7.0
- Published
- Jun 17, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 2048
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/episodes/postgres-is-half-as-fast-in-linux-7-0/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-backend-engineering-show-with-hussein-nasser-847440/postgres-is-half-as-fast-in-linux-7-0.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
An aws engineer discovered a 50% regression in postgres throughput while testing the new Linux 7.0 kernel. The cause turns out to be massive TLB and page faults exacerbated by Postgres process-based design. In this backend engineering show episode I dive deep into how this was discovered, the root cause and the possible fixes and workarounds. Intermediate and Advanced Backend Engineering Course Bundlehttps://courses.husseinnasser.com/bundleMy Book, Root Cause: Stories and Lessons from Two Decades of Backend Engineering Bugs https://amzn.to/4cKfZhe 0:00 Intro2:30 The Discovery6:30 Spinlocks9:25 Preemption 13:00 Root Cause17:00 How Postgres Processes exacerbated the problem 22:30 Is the fix easy?25:50 Summary