This release includes Asynchronous I/O (AIO):<p><a href="https://pganalyze.com/blog/postgres-18-async-io" rel="nofollow">https://pganalyze.com/blog/postgres-18-async-io</a><p>> <i>Postgres has historically operated under a synchronous I/O model, meaning every read request is a blocking system call. The database must pause and wait for the operating system to return the data before continuing.</i><p>> <i>Postgres 18 introduces a new configuration parameter: io_method. This setting determines how read operations are dispatched under the hood, and whether they’re handled synchronously, offloaded to I/O workers, or submitted directly to the kernel via io_uring.</i><p>This is a big deal - the blog post has benchmarks showing 2-3x improvements