I have just blogged about the new AIO layer we are working on:
http://clebertsuconic.blogspot.com/
The performance we are getting is very nice. Combining the new protocol, with the new file journal, with the new AIO layer on Linux = 25k messages / second on a modest workstation. We might get higher numbers when we use a bigger performance lab, and we are still looking for more optimizations to do :-)
I mean.. if we're getting this performance with alpha.. you should wait and see the next releases!