[HippoBaro]

I think there are a few misunderstandings there (the video is funny, btw). The kind of async IO I'm referring to exists one layer below whatever Apache and node are using. Both are event-driven, actually. They both use some flavor of epoll (see https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/event.html).

Historically, buffered IO was sufficient to circumvent slow threads. Simply because buffered IO operations usually don't block (you merely memcpy, and the kernel flushes asynchronously in the background). That can only take you so far, however, and it's apparent today that hardware can go much further and that the gap is widening.

It's a valid point, though, to question whether that additional performance is even needed. John Ousterhout (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o2HBHckrdQc) is currently working on a new network protocol to alleviate some of the problems TCP creates in software wrt performance, and he also questions whether there is even a need for very fast networking for real-world applications.

IMO, the mere existence of stuff like DPDK is proof enough. Many folks use it and would rather use the kernel if it could provide comparable performance.