Linux has non blocking / asynchronous IO APIs for many years already, so as a _general_ statement that is not one of the new interesting things of io uring. But

Linux has non blocking / asynchronous IO APIs for many years already, so as a _general_ statement that is not one of the new interesting things of io uring. But that is something it does well when you get into specifics (both in improving overheads of currently supported operations and expanding the types of operations that can be submitted this way).