Re: Let's make PostgreSQL multi-threaded

On 05/06/2023 11:18, Tom Lane wrote:
> Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka(at)iki(dot)fi> writes:
>> I spoke with some folks at PGCon about making PostgreSQL multi-threaded,
>> so that the whole server runs in a single process, with multiple
>> threads. It has been discussed many times in the past, last thread on
>> pgsql-hackers was back in 2017 when Konstantin made some experiments [0].
>
>> I feel that there is now pretty strong consensus that it would be a good
>> thing, more so than before. Lots of work to get there, and lots of
>> details to be hashed out, but no objections to the idea at a high level.
>
>> The purpose of this email is to make that silent consensus explicit. If
>> you have objections to switching from the current multi-process
>> architecture to a single-process, multi-threaded architecture, please
>> speak up.
>
> For the record, I think this will be a disaster. There is far too much
> code that will get broken, largely silently, and much of it is not
> under our control.

Noted. Other large projects have gone through this transition. It's not
easy, but it's a lot easier now than it was 10 years ago. The platform
and compiler support is there now, all libraries have thread-safe
interfaces, etc.

I don't expect you or others to buy into any particular code change at
this point, or to contribute time into it. Just to accept that it's a
worthwhile goal. If the implementation turns out to be a disaster, then
it won't be accepted, of course. But I'm optimistic.

--
Heikki Linnakangas
Neon (https://neon.tech)