PostgreSQL 18 Beta 1 Released

This release includes Asynchronous I/O (AIO):

https://pganalyze.com/blog/postgres-18-async-io

> 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.

> 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.

This is a big deal - the blog post has benchmarks showing 2-3x improvements