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

Asynchronous IO finally lands in Postgres 18 alongside other goodies like UUIDv7, the Over explain module and composite index skip scans. In this Backend Engineering Show episode, Hussein walks you through the nitty-gritty of synchronous vs. asynchronous calls, shows how Postgres 17 handled IO, then unveils Postgres 18’s new io_method options: worker threads and the cutting-edge io_uring mode (with a sync fallback).

You get a clear chaptered deep dive—fundamentals of async IO, the challenges Postgres faced, hands-on with io_method=worker at 20:00, io_uring at 23:00 and the path forward (direct IO support, better backend writers, more worker tweaks). If you’re keen on squeezing every drop of performance from your database, this one’s a must-watch.

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