pgpool on Opteron server running FreeBSD 6.0

I'm running postgres 8.1.3 on a 2-CPU dual-core Opteron server with
8-Gigs of RAM. The server's operating system is FreeBSD 6.0. We migrated
our client applications from Informix and went through all of the
standard steps to resolve differences between the two databases
packages. However, there are a handful of applications that generate
connection storms which we hoped could be mitigated by using pgpool. We
installed pgpool (num_init_children = 32 and max_pool = 1)ran an
application requiring only 14 pgpool children and observed the following:
a) The system load is > 20
b) WCPU values for the 14 active pgpool processes exceed 20%
c) Context switching on the server jumps as high as 250,000
The application now takes 4 (with pgpool) rather than less than two
hours (without pgpool) to complete (it took less than an hour with
Informix). Strange! Any ideas?

Thanks
--
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Andrew Rost
National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center (NOHRSC)
National Weather Service, NOAA
1735 Lake Dr. West, Chanhassen, MN 55317-8582
Voice: (952)361-6610 x 234
Fax: (952)361-6634
andy(dot)rost(at)noaa(dot)gov
http://www.nohrsc.noaa.gov
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