Benchmarking LLMs on File System Design and Implementation
Large Language Models (LLMs) are fundamentally transforming computer system research and development. As we employ LLMs in file system (fs) development, it is essential to understand their capabilities, limitations, and operational efficiency for domain-specific tasks. We present \phi-Bench, an LLM benchmarking framework for fs-specific tasks. To facilitate benchmarking, we develop six types of tasks in \phi-Bench: basic understanding, basic implementation, performance modeling, debugging, optimization, and new feature development. Each type emphasizes different LLM capabilities: instruction following, knowledge recall, reasoning, or coding. To create high-quality tasks while achieving broad coverage with minimal human effort, we develop a new AI-assisted task generation pipeline in addition to expert-written and textbook-adapted tasks. With 505 tasks in \phi-Bench, we conduct an empirical study with both open source (DeepSeek-V4-Flash, GLM-5.1, and MiniMax-M2.7) and proprietary (Claude-Opus-4.7, GPT-5.2, and Gemini-3.1-Pro) LLMs. Our study discloses the model efficiency for different tasks, causes of failed fs tasks, and techniques for mitigating LLM failures. We will open source \phi-Bench to facilitate public research on using LLMs for fs development.