All test performed on a Pentium G630 (Dual-core Sandy Bridge, no AES-NI). The working directory is on tmpfs. The untar test uses https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v3.0/linux-3.0.tar.gz . The archive is placed on tmpfs as well. WRITE: dd if=/dev/zero of=zero bs=131072 count=2000 READ: dd if=zero of=/dev/null bs=131072 count=2000 2>&1 UNTAR: time tar xzf ../linux-3.0.tar.gz MD5: time md5sum --quiet -c linux-3.0.md5sums LS: time ls -lR linux-3.0 > /dev/null RM: time rm -Rf linux-3.0 (or just run benchmark.bash) VERSION WRITE READ UNTAR MD5 LS RM ENV CHANGE? v0.4 48 1.5 5 v0.5-rc1 56 7 19 v0.5-rc1-1 54 4.1 9 v0.5-rc1-2 45 1.7 3.4 v0.6 47 1.8 4.3 v0.7 43 1.7 4.3 v0.7.2 26 1.8 4.3 v0.8 23 1.8 4.3 v0.9-rc2 94 24 1.8 4.5 v0.9 94 24 1.8 4.5 v0.11 104 22 1.7 4.5 v1.1 104 20 1.5 3.4 go1.7.1 v1.1.1-34 112 22 1.5 3.6 go1.7.3 v1.2.1-33 112 21 12 1.6 4.4 go1.8 -serialize_reads 116 21 39 1.5 4.4 (v1.2.1-33 with -serialize_reads) v1.3-27 113 20 11 1.4 4.2 v1.3-53-gf44902a 119 19 12 1.6 4.1 v1.3-64-g80516ed 123 19 11 1.3 4.2 v1.3-67-g9837cb0 125 19 11 1.4 4.2 go1.8.3, Linux 4.10 v1.3-69-ge52594d 145 19.0 11.6 1.4 4.1 v1.4-1-g3c6fe98 154 17.2 11.7 1.4 4.1 v1.4-5-g0cc6f53 182 144 16.7 11.1 1.3 3.3 v1.4-8-g80676c6 178 148 16.1 11.0 1.3 4.0 v1.4-14-g9f4bd76 182 286 15.4 7.5 1.3 4.1 v1.4-45-gd5671b7 183 282 14.9 7.3 1.1 2.9 v1.4-45-gd5671b7 252 285 15.5 7.2 1.1 2.9 go1.8.3, Linux 4.11 v1.4.1 253 285 16.0 7.4 1.3 3.0 go1.9, Linux 4.12.5 v1.4.1-6-g276567e 258 289 16.1 7.5 1.3 3.0 v1.5 228 292 17.6 9.3 1.5 3.5 go1.10.2, Linux 4.16.8 v1.6 250 289 17.7 8.0 1.3 3.2 go1.10.3, Linux 4.17.12 Results for EncFS for comparison (benchmark.bash -encfs): VERSION WRITE UNTAR MD5 LS RM encfs v1.9.1 95 20 8 2.8 3.8