The following list summarizes most of the features that XFS provides. Because the Linux implementation of XFS is still in the development stages, the features listed may or may not be applicable to the Open XFS for Linux specification. Throughput in excess of 7GBps has been demonstrated on a single file System using a 32-processor Origin2000 server. The scalability of a file system depends somewhat on how it stores information on files. Because XFS uses 64 bits to store inode numbers and addresses for each disk block, a single file can theoretically be as large as 9 million terabytes.
Large directories are also an issue with traditional linear file systems.
Applications such as Sendmail or news servers often result in spool directories with thousands of files. Looking up a filename in such a directory can take a long time, because typically the directory must be read from the beginning until the desired file is found. Using the same idea, XFS supports large numbers of files efficiently because inodes are allocated dynamically and multiple file operations are performed in parallel. The only limitation for XFS in regards to the number of files in a file system is the space available to hold them. Because XFS dynamically allocates inodes, free space usage is extremely efficient, regardless of the file size.