Asynchronous IO in Postgres 18 | TL;DR

Postgres 18 brings a ton of goodies—UUIDv7 support, an “over explain” module, composite index skip scans, and (the crown jewel) asynchronous I/O. After a quick refresher on sync vs. async calls, the show dives into how Postgres 17 handled I/O synchronously, the hurdles of going async in v18, and the two new modes: the classic worker pool and the cutting-edge io_uring driver.

Along the way you’ll see benchmarks, code walkthroughs, and how each io_method stacks up—worker, io_uring, and even the old sync path. There’s also a peek at what’s still cooking (better backend writers, direct I/O support) before wrapping up with a high-level recap.

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