The New Linux Speed Trick

Linux kernel 2.6 introduces improved IO scheduling that can increase speed — “sometimes by 1,000 percent or more, [more] often by 2x” — for standard desktop workloads, and by as much as 15 percent on many database workloads, according to Andrew Morton of Open Source Development Labs. This increased speed is accomplished by minimizing the disk head movement during concurrent reads, says Yahoo!News.