Even prior to the Linux 6.17-rc1 release on Sunday I already had kicked off some Linux 6.17 Git benchmarking in being eager to see how the performance is beginning to shape up for this next kernel release that is set to power the likes of Ubuntu 25.10 and Fedora 43. There is some good news and bad news with my early testing on the ZBook Ultra G1a for AMD Strix Halo.
This weekend I started running some initial benchmarks to see how Linux 6.17 Git is looking relative to Linux 6.16. Starting off with the AMD Ryzen AI Max+ PRO 395 I am seeing some workloads having some nice improvements on the new kernel but also some regressions. Now that Linux 6.17-rc1 is out, I will be testing on more benchmarks and more hardware over the coming days and weeks.
Some of the initial takeaways of this first Linux 6.16 vs. 6.17 Git testing include:
In a few web browser tests and also schbench as the Linux kernel synthetic scheduler benchmark was some really nice improvements. Particularly due to the strong difference in the single-threaded web browser performance, coming to mind is the AMD Hardware Feedback Interface that was merged for Linux 6.17. I haven’t yet verified if the AMD Hardware Feedback Interface is responsible for these improvements or regressions but it’s something that comes to mind on the AMD side with Linux 6.17.
In some of the graphics tests there were regressions compared to Linux 6.17, which could just be a separate AMDGPU regression as well. Again, testing on more hardware over the coming days at Phoronix.
In a few lightweight graphics tests was better performance on Linux 6.17.
Some hits in the Stress-NG kernel micro-benchmarks.
But also some nice I/O improvements observed with the early Linux 6.17 kernel state.
IO_uring is looking even better in Linux 6.17.
Stay tuned for more Linux 6.17 kernel benchmarking on different hardware in seeing if some of the improvements and regressions are just limited to Strix Halo or isolated enhancements or more broad… At least from the I/O side the Linux 6.17 results were most promising as well as some of the other improvements but also the regressions may be concerning if widespread.
