Kernel Build Speeds
Linux enthusiasts are approaching a milestone where clean kernel builds could soon complete in under 10 seconds. Recent commentary highlights how hardware advances alongside human and AI optimizations of the Kbuild code are rapidly shrinking build times.
OS kernel compilation has long served as a key performance benchmark. Compiling a defconfig x86-64 Linux kernel build now takes roughly 15 seconds, aided by recent bottlenecks removed through the work of developer Lorenzo Stoakes and the assistance of AI and large language models.
Testing the latest v4 kernel patches on a high-end workstation yielded a 15-second kernel build, compared to over 22 seconds required before the patches were applied.
Test System Specifications
The hardware configuration utilized for these benchmarks features extremely high-end enterprise components:
Two AMD EPYC 9575F 64-core processors, totaling 128 cores and 256 threads.
24 by 64GB DDR5-6400 memory modules.
Samsung PM1743 3.84TB PCIe Gen 5.0 NVMe SSD storage.
Stock Ubuntu 26.04 LTS operating system.
The code compilation benchmarking did not employ a RAMdisk to aggressively tune the compile times.
Extended Configurations
While these timings apply to minimal default kernel compilations for x86-64 systems, more complex builds with thousands of drivers and subsystems enabled via allmodconfig also saw significant improvements. The latest patches reduced allmodconfig build times from 169 seconds down to 134 seconds on the test system.
Industry observers anticipate that future hardware iterations, such as upcoming AMD Zen 6 EPYC systems paired with MRDIMMs and PCIe Gen 6 storage, could push standard defconfig Linux kernel compilation times below the 10-second threshold.
