Re: Allowing WAL fsync to be done via O_SYNC

Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>

From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net>
Cc: "William K. Volkman" <wkv@hiscorp.net>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org
Date: 2001-03-18T20:52:03Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers
Alfred Perlstein <bright@wintelcom.net> writes:
>> Just by making a thread call libc changes personality to use thread
>> safe routines (I.E. add mutex locking).  Use one thread feature, get
>> the whole set...which may not be that bad.

> Actually it can be pretty bad.  Locked bus cycles needed for mutex
> operations are very, very expensive, not something you want to do
> unless you really really need to do it.

It'd be interesting to try to get some numbers about the actual cost
of using a thread-aware libc, on platforms where there's a difference.
Shouldn't be that hard to build a postgres executable with the proper
library and run some benchmarks ... anyone care to try?

			regards, tom lane