Hussein Nasser: Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18 | The Backend Engineering Show

Postgres 18 drops a ton of neat upgrades—think UUIDv7, an “over explain” module for deeper query introspection, and composite index skip scans—but the real showstopper is built-in asynchronous IO.

After a quick refresher on sync vs async calls and a look at how Postgres 17 handled blocking IO, the video dives into Postgres 18’s new io_methods: “worker” and “io_uring.” You’ll see how each mode tackles performance challenges, and get a sneak peek at what’s next (direct IO support, better backend-writer handling, and more).

Watch on YouTube