LLM-Assisted Linux Kernel Patches Target Major Build-Time Bottlenecks

Summary

ARM engineer and longtime Linux developer Lorenzo Stoakes posted 23 patches intended to significantly reduce Linux kernel build times. The work uses an unnamed large language model to identify single-threaded bottlenecks and suggest improvements across Kbuild, kallsyms, modpost, objtool, mksysmap, and the Rust build system. Stoakes said the model generated a large amount of code, much of it “hideous,” so he extensively audited and rewrote the output, edited the accompanying documentation, and manually checked correctness in both builds and running kernels. The LLM also orchestrated build runs, testing, debugging, and analysis, and each commit carries an Assisted-by tag. The series parallelizes more build tasks and improves process efficiency across hardware and kernel configurations. Reported results show an approximately 36% faster build with all modules enabled, incremental builds up to 70% faster, and no-op builds about 90% faster. The patches still need review before they can potentially enter the mainline Linux kernel.