Re: futex results with dbt-3

From: Tom Lane <tgl(at)sss(dot)pgh(dot)pa(dot)us>
To: Manfred Spraul <manfred(at)colorfullife(dot)com>
Cc: neilc(at)samurai(dot)com, markw(at)osdl(dot)org, pgsql-performance(at)postgresql(dot)org
Subject: Re: futex results with dbt-3
Date: 2004-10-19 21:52:13
Message-ID: 20151.1098222733@sss.pgh.pa.us
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Manfred Spraul <manfred(at)colorfullife(dot)com> writes:
> Has anyone tried to replace the whole lwlock implementation with
> pthread_rwlock? At least for Linux with recent glibcs, pthread_rwlock is
> implemented with futexes, i.e. we would get a fast lock handling without
> os specific hacks.

"At least for Linux" does not strike me as equivalent to "without
OS-specific hacks".

The bigger problem here is that the SMP locking bottlenecks we are
currently seeing are *hardware* issues (AFAICT anyway). The only way
that futexes can offer a performance win is if they have a smarter way
of executing the basic atomic-test-and-set sequence than we do;
and if so, we could read their code and adopt that method without having
to buy into any large reorganization of our code.

regards, tom lane

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