Re: Sun Fire T2000 and PostgreSQL 8.1.3

Juan Casero (FL FLC) wrote:
> When I hit
> this pgsql on this laptop with a large query I can see the load spike up
> really high on both of my virtual processors. Whatever, pgsql is doing
> it looks like both cpu's are being used indepently.

Intel HT was partly a marketing thing, you don't really get two CPU's /
cores etc. The virtual CPU is really that, there is only one cpu doing
the actual work with some extra glue to help the "hyperthreading".

As to how hyper intel's hyperthreading is, OSDL did some testing (I
think the dbt2 workload) and I remember HT reducing performance for
pgsql by about 15%. Worth looking up, benchmarks are subject to a lot of
issues but was interesting.

There have been some seriously good recommendations in this newsgroup
for nice high powered servers, including good disk subsystems.

Most involve some AMD Opertons, lots of spindles with a good raid
controller preferred to one or two large disks and a good helping of
ram. Be interesting to get some numbers on the sunfire machine.

- August