Re: Scaling shared buffer eviction

On 2014-09-26 17:01:52 +0300, Ants Aasma wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 26, 2014 at 3:26 PM, Andres Freund <andres(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> wrote:
> > Neither, really. The hash calculation is visible in the profile, but not
> > that pronounced yet. The primary thing noticeable in profiles (besides
> > cache efficiency) is the comparison of the full tag after locating a
> > possible match in a bucket. 20 byte memcmp's aren't free.
>
> I'm not arguing against a more efficient hash table, but one simple
> win would be to have a buffer tag specific comparison function. I mean
> something like the attached patch. This way we avoid the loop counter
> overhead, can check the blocknum first and possibly have better branch
> prediction.

Heh. Yea. As I wrote to Heikki, 64bit compares were the thing showing
most benefits - at least with my own hashtable implementation.

> Do you have a workload where I could test if this helps alleviate the
> comparison overhead?

Fully cached readonly pgbench workloads with -M prepared already show
it. But it gets more pronounced for workload that access buffers at a
higher frequency.

At two customers I've seen this really badly in the profile because they
have OLTP statements that some index nested loops. Often looking the
same buffer up *over and over*. There often isn't a better plan (with
current pg join support at least) for joining a somewhat small number of
rows out of a large table to small/mid sized table.

Greetings,

Andres Freund

--
Andres Freund http://www.2ndQuadrant.com/
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