linux

Linux io_uring benchmark suite

End-to-end reproducer for the Linux io_uring runtime numbers shown in the top-level Performance section. The suite cross-compiles bench/http_server.zig for aarch64-linux-musl, packages it with wrk 4.2.0 into an Alpine image, and runs the wrk suite from inside the same OCI container against 127.0.0.1 so the wire is in-VM kernel loopback (no virtio-net, no host bridge).

Tested with Apple container 0.11 on macOS 26.4 (kernel 6.18.5 inside the VM). Should also work with docker or podman — set RUNTIME=docker and pick the right TARGET.

Running

# from the repo root
./bench/linux/run.sh

Tunables (env vars):

var	default	meaning
RUNTIME	container	OCI CLI to invoke (also docker)
TARGET	aarch64-linux-musl	Zig cross-compile target
IMAGE	nano-bench:latest	image tag
NAME	nano-bench	container name
CPUS	8	vCPU allocation
MEM	4096M	memory allocation
WORKERS	4	nanoapi worker count
DURATION	15s	wrk -d duration

Layout

bench/linux/
├── Containerfile        nanoapi server image (alpine + wrk + binary)
├── run.sh               build → run → bench → tear down
├── pipeline.lua         16-request pipelined wrk script
├── post-users.lua       POST body matching bench/http_server.zig BodyModel
├── auth-headers.lua     Authorization + Cookie session= for /auth
└── comparison/
    ├── fiber/           Go Fiber 2.52 server + Containerfile
    └── actix/           actix-web 4.9 server + Containerfile

Comparing against Fiber / actix-web

container build -t fiber-bench -f bench/linux/comparison/fiber/Containerfile bench/linux/comparison/fiber
container run -d --name fb --rm --cpus 8 -m 4096M \
  --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/bench/linux,target=/scripts,readonly fiber-bench
container exec fb wrk -t4 -c64 -d15s --latency -s /scripts/pipeline.lua http://127.0.0.1:8080/
container stop fb

container build -t actix-bench -f bench/linux/comparison/actix/Containerfile bench/linux/comparison/actix
container run -d --name ab --rm --cpus 8 -m 4096M \
  --mount type=bind,source=$PWD/bench/linux,target=/scripts,readonly actix-bench
container exec ab wrk -t4 -c64 -d15s --latency -s /scripts/pipeline.lua http://127.0.0.1:8080/
container stop ab

All three servers expose the same three routes (GET /, POST /users, GET /auth) with matching JSON shapes, so the wrk lua scripts work unchanged across them.

Caveats

• Apple container runs each container in a lightweight VM; numbers will differ on bare metal. The point of the suite is relative comparison with everything sharing the same VM topology.
• Prefork: true for Fiber crashes under Apple container's rootfs (no re-exec of /proc/self/exe); the bench drops it and uses the default goroutine-per-connection model.
• actix-web lto = "thin", not "fat", to keep the build under five minutes. Fat-LTO would gain a few percent.
• bench/http_server.zig's parseRuntime only knows auto / event_loop / thread_per_connection. auto is sufficient — on Linux it resolves to io_uring via effectiveRuntime in src/server.zig.