PostgreSQL 18.0 is out today as the annual major feature release for this widely-used SQL database server. PostgreSQL 18 is a big one with many exciting performance optimizations and other new features.
There is a heck of a lot to get excited about for PostgreSQL 18 if you are a database nerd and/or performance junkie. PostgreSQL 18 brings initial support for NUMA awareness, AVX-512 usage for CRC32C computations, asynchronous I/O support, initial support for IO_uring on Linux, self-join elimination optimization, SIMD-optimized JSON escaping, and a range of other performance improvements and different optimizations.
PostgreSQL 18 also brings virtual generated columns, temporal constraints, and other new developer additions. There is also improved text processing, replication enhancements, better vacuum strategy, and initdb now enabling page checksums by default.
Downloads and more details on all of the really great changes with today’s PostgreSQL 18.0 release can be found via PostgreSQL.org.
