Re: Possible performance improvement: buffer replacement policy

Bruce Momjian <pgman(at)candle(dot)pha(dot)pa(dot)us> writes:
>> It looks like it wouldn't take too much work to replace shared buffers
>> on the basis of LRU-2 instead of LRU, so I'm thinking about trying it.
>>
>> Has anyone looked into this area? Is there a better method to try?

> Sounds like a perfect idea. Good luck. :-)

Actually, the idea went down in flames :-(, but I neglected to report
back to pghackers about it. I did do some code to manage buffers as
LRU-2. I didn't have any good performance test cases to try it with,
but Richard Brosnahan was kind enough to re-run the TPC tests previously
published by Great Bridge with that code in place. Wasn't any faster,
in fact possibly a little slower, likely due to the extra CPU time spent
on buffer freelist management. It's possible that other scenarios might
show a better result, but right now I feel pretty discouraged about the
LRU-2 idea and am not pursuing it.

regards, tom lane