6.6 AnonPages: 492536 kB AnonHugePages: 264192 kB 6.7 AnonPages: 770116 kB AnonHugePages: 399360 kB There is much more anonymous memory used in 6.7 kernel (~270MB). Daniel has already mentioned that this might be THP related but only part of it can be contributed to that (135MB). So some userspace had to consume more memory with the newer kernel which is rather unexpected. Are you sure you are comparing the exactly same userspace here?