Re: SLRU optimization - configurable buffer pool and partitioning the SLRU lock

On Tue, Oct 24, 2023 at 06:04:13PM +0200, Alvaro Herrera wrote:
> Like everybody else, I like having less GUCs to configure, but going
> this far to avoid them looks rather disastrous to me.  IMO we should
> just use Munro's older patches that gave one GUC per SLRU, and users
> only need to increase the one that shows up in pg_wait_event sampling.
> Someday we will get the (much more complicated) patches to move these
> buffers to steal memory from shared buffers, and that'll hopefully let
> use get rid of all this complexity.

+1

> On the other hand, here's a somewhat crazy idea.  What if, instead of
> stealing buffers from shared_buffers (which causes a lot of complexity),
> we allocate a common pool for all SLRUs to use?  We provide a single
> knob -- say, non_relational_buffers=32MB as default -- and we use a LRU
> algorithm (or something) to distribute that memory across all the SLRUs.
> So the ratio to use for this SLRU or that one would depend on the nature
> of the workload: maybe more for multixact in this server here, but more
> for subtrans in that server there; it's just the total amount that the
> user would have to configure, side by side with shared_buffers (and
> perhaps scale with it like wal_buffers), and the LRU would handle the
> rest.  The "only" problem here is finding a distribution algorithm that
> doesn't further degrade performance, of course ...

I think it's worth a try.  It does seem simpler, and it might allow us to
sidestep some concerns about scaling when the SLRU pages are in
shared_buffers [0].

[0] https://postgr.es/m/ZPsaEGRvllitxB3v%40tamriel.snowman.net

-- 
Nathan Bossart
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