Re: Reduce timing overhead of EXPLAIN ANALYZE using rdtsc?

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

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

To: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

Cc: David Geier <geidav.pg@gmail.com>, vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>, Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>, Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, Ibrar Ahmed <ibrar.ahmad@gmail.com>, Maciek Sakrejda <m.sakrejda@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>

Date: 2023-01-13T20:25:16Z

Lists: pgsql-hackers

Commits

Same data as JSON: GET /api/v1/messages/:b64id/commits the thread's linked commits as JSON, with link sources. API reference →

pg_test_timing: Also test RDTSC[P] timing, report time source, TSC frequency
- 16fca4825483 19 (unreleased) landed
Allow retrieving x86 TSC frequency/flags from CPUID
- bcb2cf41f964 19 (unreleased) landed
instrumentation: Standardize ticks to nanosecond conversion method
- 0022622c93d9 19 (unreleased) landed
instrumentation: Use Time-Stamp Counter on x86-64 to lower overhead
- 294520c44487 19 (unreleased) landed
Zero initialize uses of instr_time about to trigger compiler warnings
- 25b2aba0c3a5 16.0 landed
instr_time: Represent time as an int64 on all platforms
- 03023a2664f8 16.0 landed
Add 250c8ee07ed to git-blame-ignore-revs
- ff23b592ad66 16.0 cited

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> writes:
> On 2023-01-04 13:02:05 +0100, David Geier wrote:
>> Subject: [PATCH 1/3] Change instr_time to just store nanoseconds, that's
>> cheaper.

> Does anybody see a reason to not move forward with this aspect? We do a fair
> amount of INSTR_TIME_ACCUM_DIFF() etc, and that gets a good bit cheaper by
> just using nanoseconds.

Cheaper, and perhaps more accurate too?  Don't recall if we have any code
paths where the input timestamps are likely to be better-than-microsecond,
but surely that's coming someday.

I'm unsure that we want to deal with rdtsc's vagaries in general, but
no objection to changing instr_time.

			regards, tom lane