Linux 6.8 has received important updates that significantly enhance the performance of the TCP stack. These changes improve the processing speed of numerous parallel TCP connections, resulting in a 40% increase in performance.
This major improvement is made possible by optimizing the structures of the network stack, namely SOCKS, NetDEV, Netns, and MIBS. Previously, the variables in these structures were randomly arranged due to historical reasons. By reorganizing them considering the characteristics of the processor cache, the efficiency of the TCP stack has significantly improved, especially when dealing with a high number of simultaneous connections.
In addition to TCP optimization, Linux 6.8 introduces support for new network devices, including the Texas Instrument DP83TG720S and Octeon CN10K network adapters. Furthermore, it adds support for new Bluetooth chipsets, such as QCA2066.
The update also includes driver updates for network adapters from Intel, Mellanox, Broadcom, and other manufacturers. These updates enable new features, such as hardware mirroring of packets and accelerated processing of VLANs.
Additionally, the BPF subsystem of the kernel has also been enhanced. The verifier has been expanded, support for metadata for the XDP is now implemented, and errors in the interaction with the kernel integrity monitoring mechanism have been fixed.