Re: intel vs amd benchmark for pg server part 2

On Fri, Apr 26, 2002 at 10:52:35PM -0400, postgres(at)vrane(dot)com wrote:
> Another gripe I have is that vacuum process does not eat up 100%
> of cpu. In the beginning it peaks around 80% and at the end
> it is stuck around 20%.
>
> Whenever I have a long running process and
> it is not eating up 100% of cpu I feel I am not getting my money's
> worth for the cpu. I wonder why vacuum process is not more parallelized
> if at all. I can imagine manually vacuuming many tables in parallel
> and it might eat up all cpu and I wonder whether it might finish quicker.

I think you must not have very much experience with databases. They
are totally limited by the disk (storage) subsystem. You know, the
part of your machine that has to wait 10 or more milliseconds for a
little metal arm to swing into position. Very retro!

I'd be pissed off if vacuum was taking that much of my CPU time.
Usually it wails away on the disks (8 15000RPM monsters) and the
CPUs twiddle their thumbs.

As for IDE controllers: they are all fifth-rate crap. Get a SCSI
controller.

-jwb