# Linux 7.4 merges kernel build speed patches, up to 70% faster incremental builds

> **Key takeaway:** Arm engineer Lorenzo Stoakes' patches to accelerate Linux kernel builds have begun landing in Linux 7.4, with full builds up to ~36% faster and incremental builds up to ~70% faster.

**Published:** 2026-10-22T00:52:38+00:00 
**Source:** Phoronix Benchmarks & Drivers 
**Category:** kernel-os 
**Canonical URL:** https://fosswire.org/news/linux-74-merges-kernel-build-speed-patches-up-to-70-faster-i.html 

## Summary
The initial batch of kernel build optimization patches by Arm engineer Lorenzo Stoakes has been merged into Linux 7.4. These Kbuild changes address single-threaded bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the build pipeline. When the full patch series is applied, benchmarks showed kernel builds approximately 36% faster and incremental builds roughly 70% faster for both GCC and LLVM/Clang toolchains.

## What the Kbuild patches change
- Avoids allocating .modinfo in vmlinux, reducing link-time overhead
- Speeds up kallsyms symbol processing and removes unnecessary sorting steps
- Emits relocations only on the final vmlinux link instead of intermediate stages
- Re-implements mksysmap in C for better performance
- Caches more cc-option and ld-option test results to avoid redundant compiler probes
- Uses pigz (parallel gzip) where available for faster compression

## Why it matters
Faster kernel builds benefit distribution maintainers, kernel developers, and CI systems that compile Linux frequently. The improvements apply to both GCC and Clang builds.