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

TL;DR: Postgres 18 just dropped with goodies like UUIDv7, an “over explain” module, and composite index skip scans—and the headline feature: asynchronous I/O support using both worker threads and the new io_uring method.

The show digs into why async I/O matters, how Postgres 17’s sync model worked, and the nuts and bolts of Postgres 18’s io_method options (worker, io_uring, sync fallback). Plus, there’s a sneak peek at what’s still on the roadmap—better backend writer support, improved worker I/O tweaks, and direct I/O.

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