While Linus Torvalds previously shot down plans for Profile Guided Optimizations (PGO) in the mainline Linux kernel, Google engineers are hoping still to get that out-of-tree functionality upstream. They also would like to see PGO supported for Linux kernel modules rather than just the main Linux kernel image. Additionally, they hope to see limitations overcome around AutoFDO and Propeller optimizations of kernel modules.

Google engineers presented this week at the LPC 2026 conference in Prague on advancing PGO, AutoFDO, and Propeller compiler optimization techniques for the Linux kernel. They want to see Profile Guided Optimizations upstreamed as well as kernel modules supporting these optimization techniques in the name of better performance.

These optimizations are being pursued to both benefit Google servers as well as having implications for Android devices too.

With Linus Torvalds previously rejecting PGO from the mainline tree, it remains to be seen if/when they will be able to convince him otherwise. They are proposing a unified Kbuild interface that would ease the compiler optimization challenges for kernel modules so that profile data is easily generated for them.

Hopefully this work can pan out as PGO has shown measurable performance benefits and the ability to better optimize kernel modules is worthwhile too. Those interested can find the presentation assets from the LPC2026 talk on lpc.events.