Trying to reduce per tuple overhead (bitmap)

Tom Lane wrote in another tread:
> PS: I did like your point about BITMAPLEN; I think that might be
> a free savings. I was waiting for you to bring it up on hackers
> before commenting though...
So here we go...

Hi,

in htup.h MinHeapTupleBitmapSize is defined to be 32, i.e. the bitmap
uses at least so many bits, if the tuple has at least one null
attribute. The bitmap starts at offset 31 in the tuple header. The
macro BITMAPLEN calculates, for a given number of attributes NATTS,
the length of the bitmap in bytes. BITMAPLEN is the smallest number n
divisible by 4, so that 8*n >= NATTS.

The size of the tuple header is rounded up to a multiple of 4 (on a
typical(?) architecture) by MAXALIGN(...). So we get:

NATTS BITMAPLEN THSIZE
8 4 36
16 4 36
33 8 40

I don't quite understand the definition of BITMAPLEN:

#define BITMAPLEN(NATTS) \
((((((int)(NATTS) - 1) >> 3) + 4 - (MinHeapTupleBitmapSize >> 3)) \
& ~03) + (MinHeapTupleBitmapSize >> 3))

AFAICS only for MinHeapTupleBitmapSize == 32 we get a meaningful
result, namely a multiple of MinHeapTupleBitmapSize, converted from a
number of bits to a number of bytes. If this is true, we dont't need
the "+ 4 - (MinHeapTupleBitmapSize >> 3)" and the definition could be
simplified to
(((((int)(NATTS) - 1) >> 3) & ~03) + 4)

Some examples, writing MBMB for (MinHeapTupleBitmapSize >> 3):

MBMB = 4:
((((NATTS - 1) >> 3) + 4 - MBMB) & ~03) + MBMB
32 31 3 7 3 0 4
33 32 4 8 4 4 8
64 63 7 11 7 4 8
65 64 8 12 8 8 12

MBMB = 1:
((((NATTS - 1) >> 3) + 4 - MBMB) & ~03) + MBMB
8 7 0 4 3 0 1
9 8 1 5 4 4 5
32 31 3 7 6 4 5
33 32 4 8 7 4 5
56 55 6 10 9 8 9
64 63 7 11 10 8 9
65 64 8 12 11 8 9

MBMB = 8:
((((NATTS - 1) >> 3) + 4 - MBMB) & ~03) + MBMB
8 7 0 4 -4 -4 4
9 8 1 5 -3 -4 4
32 31 3 7 -1 -4 4
33 32 4 8 0 0 8
56 55 6 10 2 0 8
64 63 7 11 3 0 8
65 64 8 12 4 4 12

Proposal 1:
#define BitMapBytes 4 // or any other power of 2
#define MinHeapTupleBitmapSize (BitMapBytes * 8)
#define BITMAPLEN(NATTS) \
(((((int)(NATTS) - 1) >> 3) & ~(BitMapBytes - 1)) + BitMapBytes)

Proposal 2: Let BITMAPLEN calculate the minimum number of bytes
necessary to have one bit for every attribute.

#define BitMapBytes 1

old old new new
NATTS BITMAPLEN THSIZE BITMAPLEN THSIZE
8 4 36 1 32
16 4 36 2 36
33 8 40 5 36

This looks so simple. Is there something wrong with it?
Does it need further discussion or should I submit a patch?

Servus
Manfred