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  1. Don't elide blank lines when accumulating psql command history.

  1. testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-18T15:11:42Z

    We have three patches in the hopper that all have the same goal:
reduce ProcArrayLock contention.  They are:

[1] Pavan's patch (subsequently revised by Heikki) to put the "hot"
members of the PGPROC structure into a separate array
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/4EB7C4C9.9070309@enterprisedb.com

[2] my FlexLocks patch, and
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/CA+Tgmoax_14rbx8Y6mmgvW64gCQL4ZviDzwEObXEMuiV=TwmxQ@mail.gmail.com

[3] my patch to eliminate some snapshot (I think this is also better
semantics, but at any rate it also improves performance)
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/CA+TgmoYDe3dx7xuK_rCPLWy7P67hp96ozyGe_K6W87kfx3YCGw@mail.gmail.com

Interestingly, these all try to reduce ProcArrayLock contention in
different ways: [1] does it by making snapshot-taking scan fewer cache
lines, [2] does it by reducing contention for the spinlock protecting
ProcArrayLock, and [3] does it by taking fewer snapshots.  So you
might think that the effects of these patches would add, at least to
some degree.

Now the first two patches are the ones that seem to show the most
performance improvement, so I tested both patches individually and
also a combination of the two patches (the combined patch for this is
attached, as there were numerous conflicts).  I tested them on two
different machines with completely different architectures; Nate
Boley's AMD 6128 box (which has 32 cores) and an HP Integrity server
(also with 32 cores).  On Integrity, I compiled using the aCC
compiler, adjusted the resulting binary with chatr +pi L +pd L, and
ran both pgbench and the server with rtsched -s SCHED_NOAGE -p 178,
which are settings that seem to be necessary for good performance on
that platform.  pgbench was run locally on the AMD box but from
another server over a high-speed network interconnect on the Integrity
server.  Both servers were configured with shared_buffers=8GB,
checkpoint_segments=300, wal_writer_delay=20ms, and
synchronous_commit=off.  Some of the other settings were different; on
the Integrity server, I had effective_cache_size=340GB,
checkpoint_timeout=30min, and wal_buffers=16MB, while on the AMD box I
had checkpoint_completion_target=0.9 and maintenance_work_mem=1GB.  I
doubt that these settings differences were material (except that they
probably made reinitializing the database between tests take longer on
the Integrity system, since I forgot to set maintenance_work_mem), but
I could double-check that if anyone is concerned about it.

The results are below.  In a nutshell, either patch by itself is very,
very good; and both patches together are somewhat better.  Which one
helps more individually is somewhat variable.  Lines marked "m" are
unpatched master as of commit
ff4fd4bf53c5512427f8ecea08d6ca7777efa2c5.  "p" is Pavan's PGPROC patch
(maybe I should have said ppp...) as revised by Heikki; "f" is the
latest version of my FlexLocks patch, and "b" is the combination patch
attached herewith.  The number immediately following is the number of
clients used, each with its own pgbench thread (i.e. -c N -j N).  As
usual, each number is the median of three five-minute runs at scale
factor 100.

Since Pavan's patch has the advantage of being quite simple, I'm
thinking we should push that one through to completion first, and then
test all the other possible improvements in this area relative to that
new baseline.

== AMD Opteron 6128, 32 cores, Permanent Tables ==

m01 tps = 631.208073 (including connections establishing)
p01 tps = 631.182923 (including connections establishing)
f01 tps = 636.308562 (including connections establishing)
b01 tps = 629.295507 (including connections establishing)
m08 tps = 4516.479854 (including connections establishing)
p08 tps = 4614.772650 (including connections establishing)
f08 tps = 4652.454768 (including connections establishing)
b08 tps = 4679.363474 (including connections establishing)
m16 tps = 7788.615240 (including connections establishing)
p16 tps = 7824.025406 (including connections establishing)
f16 tps = 7841.876146 (including connections establishing)
b16 tps = 7859.334650 (including connections establishing)
m24 tps = 11720.145052 (including connections establishing)
p24 tps = 12782.696214 (including connections establishing)
f24 tps = 12559.765555 (including connections establishing)
b24 tps = 12891.945766 (including connections establishing)
m32 tps = 10223.015618 (including connections establishing)
p32 tps = 11585.902050 (including connections establishing)
f32 tps = 11626.542744 (including connections establishing)
b32 tps = 11866.969986 (including connections establishing)
m80 tps = 7540.482189 (including connections establishing)
p80 tps = 11598.446238 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 11529.752081 (including connections establishing)
b80 tps = 11714.364294 (including connections establishing)

== AMD Opteron 6128, 32 cores, Unlogged Tables ==

m01 tps = 680.398630 (including connections establishing)
p01 tps = 673.293390 (including connections establishing)
f01 tps = 679.993953 (including connections establishing)
b01 tps = 679.377600 (including connections establishing)
m08 tps = 4760.964292 (including connections establishing)
p08 tps = 4870.037842 (including connections establishing)
f08 tps = 5028.719509 (including connections establishing)
b08 tps = 4893.439824 (including connections establishing)
m16 tps = 7997.051705 (including connections establishing)
p16 tps = 8218.884377 (including connections establishing)
f16 tps = 8160.373682 (including connections establishing)
b16 tps = 8144.707958 (including connections establishing)
m24 tps = 13066.867858 (including connections establishing)
p24 tps = 14523.109116 (including connections establishing)
f24 tps = 14098.978673 (including connections establishing)
b24 tps = 14526.330294 (including connections establishing)
m32 tps = 10800.711985 (including connections establishing)
p32 tps = 19159.131614 (including connections establishing)
f32 tps = 22224.839905 (including connections establishing)
b32 tps = 23373.672552 (including connections establishing)
m80 tps = 7885.663468 (including connections establishing)
p80 tps = 17760.149440 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 19960.356205 (including connections establishing)
b80 tps = 18665.581069 (including connections establishing)

== HP Integrity, 32 cores, Permanent Tables ==

m01 tps = 883.732295 (including connections establishing)
p01 tps = 866.449154 (including connections establishing)
f01 tps = 924.364403 (including connections establishing)
b01 tps = 926.797302 (including connections establishing)
m08 tps = 6098.047731 (including connections establishing)
p08 tps = 6293.537855 (including connections establishing)
f08 tps = 6059.635731 (including connections establishing)
b08 tps = 6250.132288 (including connections establishing)
m16 tps = 9995.755003 (including connections establishing)
p16 tps = 10654.562946 (including connections establishing)
f16 tps = 10258.008496 (including connections establishing)
b16 tps = 10712.776806 (including connections establishing)
m24 tps = 11646.915026 (including connections establishing)
p24 tps = 13483.345338 (including connections establishing)
f24 tps = 12815.456128 (including connections establishing)
b24 tps = 13506.218109 (including connections establishing)
m32 tps = 10433.315312 (including connections establishing)
p32 tps = 14111.719739 (including connections establishing)
f32 tps = 13990.284158 (including connections establishing)
b32 tps = 14697.189751 (including connections establishing)
m80 tps = 8177.428209 (including connections establishing)
p80 tps = 11343.667289 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 11651.244256 (including connections establishing)
b80 tps = 12523.308466 (including connections establishing)

== HP Integrity, 32 cores, Unlogged Tables ==

m01 tps = 949.594327 (including connections establishing)
p01 tps = 958.753925 (including connections establishing)
f01 tps = 931.276655 (including connections establishing)
b01 tps = 943.836646 (including connections establishing)
m08 tps = 6211.621726 (including connections establishing)
p08 tps = 6412.267441 (including connections establishing)
f08 tps = 5843.870591 (including connections establishing)
b08 tps = 6428.415940 (including connections establishing)
m16 tps = 10341.538889 (including connections establishing)
p16 tps = 11161.425798 (including connections establishing)
f16 tps = 10545.954472 (including connections establishing)
b16 tps = 11235.441290 (including connections establishing)
m24 tps = 11859.831632 (including connections establishing)
p24 tps = 14380.766878 (including connections establishing)
f24 tps = 13489.351324 (including connections establishing)
b24 tps = 14579.649665 (including connections establishing)
m32 tps = 10716.208372 (including connections establishing)
p32 tps = 15497.819188 (including connections establishing)
f32 tps = 14590.406972 (including connections establishing)
b32 tps = 15991.920288 (including connections establishing)
m80 tps = 8465.159253 (including connections establishing)
p80 tps = 11945.494890 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 14676.324769 (including connections establishing)
b80 tps = 15623.109737 (including connections establishing)

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  2. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T16:26:02Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Nate Boley's AMD 6128 box (which has 32 cores) and an HP Integrity
> server (also with 32 cores). 
 
> [clear improvement with flexlock patch]
 
Hmm.  We have a 32-core Intel box (4 x X7560 @ 2.27GHz) with 256 GB
RAM.  It's about a week from going into production, at which point
it will be extremely hard to schedule such tests, but for a few days
more I've got shots at it.  The flexlock patch doesn't appear to be
such a clear win here.
 
I started from Robert's tests, but used these settings so that I
could go to higher client counts and better test serializable
transactions.  Everything is fully cached.
 
max_connections = 200
max_pred_locks_per_transaction = 256
shared_buffers = 8GB
maintenance_work_mem = 1GB
checkpoint_segments = 30
checkpoint_timeout = 15min
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
seq_page_cost = 0.1
random_page_cost = 0.1
cpu_tuple_cost = 0.05
effective_cache_size = 40GB
default_transaction_isolation = '$iso'
 
Serializable results not shown here -- that's to gather information
for trying to improve SSI locking.
 
m1 tps = 7847.834544 (including connections establishing)
f1 tps = 7917.225382 (including connections establishing)
m2 tps = 18672.145526 (including connections establishing)
f2 tps = 17486.435322 (including connections establishing)
m4 tps = 34371.278253 (including connections establishing)
f4 tps = 34465.898173 (including connections establishing)
m8 tps = 68228.261694 (including connections establishing)
f8 tps = 68505.285830 (including connections establishing)
m16 tps = 127449.815100 (including connections establishing)
f16 tps = 127208.939670 (including connections establishing)
m32 tps = 201738.209348 (including connections establishing)
f32 tps = 201637.237903 (including connections establishing)
m64 tps = 380326.800557 (including connections establishing)
f64 tps = 380628.429408 (including connections establishing)
m80 tps = 366628.197546 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 162594.012051 (including connections establishing)
m96 tps = 360922.948775 (including connections establishing)
f96 tps = 366728.987041 (including connections establishing)
m128 tps = 352159.631878 (including connections establishing)
f128 tps = 355475.129448 (including connections establishing)
 
I did five runs each and took the median.  In most cases, the values
were pretty close to one another in a group, so confidence is pretty
high that this is meaningful.  There were a few anomalies where
performance for one or more samples was horrid.  This seems
consistent with the theory of pathological pileups on the LW locks
(or also flexlocks?).
 
The problem groups:
 
m64 tps = 380407.768906 (including connections establishing)
m64 tps = 79197.470389 (including connections establishing)
m64 tps = 381112.194105 (including connections establishing)
m64 tps = 378579.036542 (including connections establishing)
m64 tps = 380326.800557 (including connections establishing)

m96 tps = 360582.945291 (including connections establishing)
m96 tps = 363021.805138 (including connections establishing)
m96 tps = 362468.870516 (including connections establishing)
m96 tps = 59614.322351 (including connections establishing)
m96 tps = 360922.948775 (including connections establishing)

f80 tps = 158905.149822 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 157192.460599 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 370757.790443 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 162594.012051 (including connections establishing)
f80 tps = 372170.638516 (including connections establishing)

f96 tps = 366804.733788 (including connections establishing)
f96 tps = 366728.987041 (including connections establishing)
f96 tps = 365490.380848 (including connections establishing)
f96 tps = 366770.193305 (including connections establishing)
f96 tps = 125225.371140 (including connections establishing)
 
So the lows don't seem to be as low when they happen with the
flexlock patch, but they still happen -- possibly more often?
 
-Kevin

  3. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-18T16:33:04Z

    On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 11:26 AM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Nate Boley's AMD 6128 box (which has 32 cores) and an HP Integrity
>> server (also with 32 cores).
>
>> [clear improvement with flexlock patch]
>
> Hmm.  We have a 32-core Intel box (4 x X7560 @ 2.27GHz) with 256 GB
> RAM.  It's about a week from going into production, at which point
> it will be extremely hard to schedule such tests, but for a few days
> more I've got shots at it.  The flexlock patch doesn't appear to be
> such a clear win here.
>
> I started from Robert's tests, but used these settings so that I
> could go to higher client counts and better test serializable
> transactions.  Everything is fully cached.
>
> max_connections = 200
> max_pred_locks_per_transaction = 256
> shared_buffers = 8GB
> maintenance_work_mem = 1GB
> checkpoint_segments = 30
> checkpoint_timeout = 15min
> checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
> seq_page_cost = 0.1
> random_page_cost = 0.1
> cpu_tuple_cost = 0.05
> effective_cache_size = 40GB
> default_transaction_isolation = '$iso'

I had a dismaying benchmarking experience recently that involved
settings very similar to the ones you've got there - in particular, I
also had checkpoint_segments set to 30.  When I raised it to 300,
performance improved dramatically at 8 clients and above.

Then again, is this a regular pgbench test or is this SELECT-only?
Because the absolute numbers you're posting are vastly higher than
anything I've ever seen on a write test.

Can you by any chance check top or vmstat during the 32-client test
and see what percentage you have of user time/system time/idle time?

What OS are you running?

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  4. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T17:03:41Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Then again, is this a regular pgbench test or is this SELECT-only?
 
SELECT-only
 
> Can you by any chance check top or vmstat during the 32-client
> test and see what percentage you have of user time/system
> time/idle time?
 
You didn't say whether you wanted master or flexlock, but it turned
out that any difference was way too far into the noise to show. 
They both looked like this:
 
procs --------------memory------------- ---swap-- -----io----
 r  b   swpd    free      buff    cache   si   so    bi    bo
 ----system---- -----cpu------
     in      cs us sy id wa st
38  0    352 1157400 207177020 52360472    0    0     0    16
  13345 1190230 40  7 53  0  0
37  0    352 1157480 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
  12953 1263310 40  8 52  0  0
36  0    352 1157484 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
  13411 1233365 38  7 54  0  0
37  0    352 1157476 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
  12780 1193575 41  7 51  0  0
 
Keep in mind that while there are really 32 cores, the cpu
percentages seem to be based on the "threads" from hyperthreading. 
Top showed pgbench (running on the same machine) as eating a pretty
steady 5.2 of the cores, leaving 26.8 cores to actually drive the 32
postgres processes.
 
> What OS are you running?
 
Linux new-CIR 2.6.32.43-0.4-default #1 SMP 2011-07-14 14:47:44 +0200
x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
 
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11
PATCHLEVEL = 1
 
-Kevin

  5. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T17:20:07Z

    "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
 
> We have a 32-core Intel box (4 x X7560 @ 2.27GHz) with 256 GB
> RAM.
 
In case anyone cares, this is the same box for which I posted STREAM
test results a while back.  The PostgreSQL tests seem to peak on
this 32-core box at 64 clients, while the STREAM test of raw RAM
speed kept increasing up to 128 clients.  Overall, though, it's
impressive how close PostgreSQL is now coming to the raw RAM access
speed curve.
 
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-08/msg01306.php
 
-Kevin

  6. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-18T17:26:05Z

    On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 12:03 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
>> Then again, is this a regular pgbench test or is this SELECT-only?
>
> SELECT-only

Ah, OK.  I would not expect flexlocks to help with that; Pavan's patch
might, though.

>> Can you by any chance check top or vmstat during the 32-client
>> test and see what percentage you have of user time/system
>> time/idle time?
>
> You didn't say whether you wanted master or flexlock, but it turned
> out that any difference was way too far into the noise to show.
> They both looked like this:
>
> procs --------------memory------------- ---swap-- -----io----
>  r  b   swpd    free      buff    cache   si   so    bi    bo
>  ----system---- -----cpu------
>     in      cs us sy id wa st
> 38  0    352 1157400 207177020 52360472    0    0     0    16
>  13345 1190230 40  7 53  0  0
> 37  0    352 1157480 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
>  12953 1263310 40  8 52  0  0
> 36  0    352 1157484 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
>  13411 1233365 38  7 54  0  0
> 37  0    352 1157476 207177020 52360472    0    0     0     0
>  12780 1193575 41  7 51  0  0
>
> Keep in mind that while there are really 32 cores, the cpu
> percentages seem to be based on the "threads" from hyperthreading.
> Top showed pgbench (running on the same machine) as eating a pretty
> steady 5.2 of the cores, leaving 26.8 cores to actually drive the 32
> postgres processes.

It doesn't make any sense for PostgreSQL master to be using only 50%
of the CPU and leaving the rest idle on a lots-of-clients SELECT-only
test.  That could easily happen on 9.1, but my lock manager changes
eliminated the only place where anything gets put to sleep in that
path (except for the emergency sleeps done by s_lock, when a spinlock
is really badly contended).  So I'm confused by these results.  Are we
sure that the processes are being scheduled across all 32 physical
cores?

At any rate, I do think it's likely that you're being bitten by
spinlock contention, but we'd need to do some legwork to verify that
and work out the details.  Any chance you can run oprofile (on either
branch, don't really care) against the 32 client test and post the
results?  If it turns out s_lock is at the top of the heap, I can put
together a patch to help figure out which spinlock is the culprit.

Anyway, this is probably a digression as it relates to FlexLocks:
those are not optimizing for a read-only workload.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  7. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T17:45:52Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
 
>>> Then again, is this a regular pgbench test or is this
>>> SELECT-only?
>>
>> SELECT-only
> 
> Ah, OK.  I would not expect flexlocks to help with that; Pavan's
> patch might, though.
 
OK.  Sorry for misunderstanding that.  I haven't gotten around to a
deep reading of the patch yet.  :-(  I based this on the test script
you posted here (with slight modifications for my preferred
directory structures):
 
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-10/msg00605.php
 
If I just drop the -S switch will I have a good test, or are there
other adjustments I should make (besides increasing checkpoint
segments)?  (Well, for the SELECT-only test I didn't bother putting
pg_xlog on a separate RAID 10 on it's own BBU controller as we
normally would for this machine, I'll cover that, too.)
 
> It doesn't make any sense for PostgreSQL master to be using only
> 50% of the CPU and leaving the rest idle on a lots-of-clients
> SELECT-only test.  That could easily happen on 9.1, but my lock
> manager changes eliminated the only place where anything gets put
> to sleep in that path (except for the emergency sleeps done by
> s_lock, when a spinlock is really badly contended).  So I'm
> confused by these results. Are we sure that the processes are
> being scheduled across all 32 physical cores?
 
I think so.  My take was that it was showing 32 of 64 *threads*
active -- the hyperthreading funkiness.  Is there something in
particular you'd like me to check?
 
> At any rate, I do think it's likely that you're being bitten by
> spinlock contention, but we'd need to do some legwork to verify
> that and work out the details.  Any chance you can run oprofile
> (on either branch, don't really care) against the 32 client test
> and post the results?  If it turns out s_lock is at the top of the
> heap, I can put together a patch to help figure out which spinlock
> is the culprit.
 
oprofile isn't installed on this machine.  I'll take care of that
and post results when I can.
 
-Kevin

  8. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-18T17:51:28Z

    On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 12:45 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> OK.  Sorry for misunderstanding that.  I haven't gotten around to a
> deep reading of the patch yet.  :-(  I based this on the test script
> you posted here (with slight modifications for my preferred
> directory structures):
>
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-hackers/2011-10/msg00605.php
>
> If I just drop the -S switch will I have a good test, or are there
> other adjustments I should make (besides increasing checkpoint
> segments)?  (Well, for the SELECT-only test I didn't bother putting
> pg_xlog on a separate RAID 10 on it's own BBU controller as we
> normally would for this machine, I'll cover that, too.)

Yeah, I'd just drop -S.  Make sure to use -c N -j N with pgbench, or
you'll probably not be able to saturate it.  I've also had good luck
with wal_writer_delay=20ms, although if you have synchronous_commit=on
that might not matter, and it's much less important since Simon's
recent patch in that area went in.

What scale factor are you testing at?

>> It doesn't make any sense for PostgreSQL master to be using only
>> 50% of the CPU and leaving the rest idle on a lots-of-clients
>> SELECT-only test.  That could easily happen on 9.1, but my lock
>> manager changes eliminated the only place where anything gets put
>> to sleep in that path (except for the emergency sleeps done by
>> s_lock, when a spinlock is really badly contended).  So I'm
>> confused by these results. Are we sure that the processes are
>> being scheduled across all 32 physical cores?
>
> I think so.  My take was that it was showing 32 of 64 *threads*
> active -- the hyperthreading funkiness.  Is there something in
> particular you'd like me to check?

Not really, just don't understand the number.

>> At any rate, I do think it's likely that you're being bitten by
>> spinlock contention, but we'd need to do some legwork to verify
>> that and work out the details.  Any chance you can run oprofile
>> (on either branch, don't really care) against the 32 client test
>> and post the results?  If it turns out s_lock is at the top of the
>> heap, I can put together a patch to help figure out which spinlock
>> is the culprit.
>
> oprofile isn't installed on this machine.  I'll take care of that
> and post results when I can.

OK.

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  9. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T18:14:56Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Yeah, I'd just drop -S.
 
Easily done.
 
> Make sure to use -c N -j N with pgbench, or you'll probably not be
> able to saturate it.
 
Yeah, that's part of the script I copied from you.
 
> I've also had good luck with wal_writer_delay=20ms, although if
> you have synchronous_commit=on that might not matter, and it's
> much less important since Simon's recent patch in that area went
> in.
 
What the heck; will do.
 
> What scale factor are you testing at?
 
100.  Perhaps I should boost that since I'm going as far as 128
clients?
 
-Kevin

  10. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T19:05:52Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Any chance you can run oprofile (on either branch, don't really
> care) against the 32 client test and post the results?
 
Besides the other changes we discussed, I boosted scale to 150 and
ran at READ COMMITTED isolation level (because all threads promptly
crashed and burned at REPEATABLE READ -- we desperately need a
pgbench option to retry a transaction on serialization failure). 
The oprofile hot spots at half a percent or higher:
 
CPU: Intel Core/i7, speed 2262 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with
a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
samples  %        image name      symbol name
933394    4.9651  postgres        AllocSetAlloc
848476    4.5134  postgres        base_yyparse
719515    3.8274  postgres        SearchCatCache
461275    2.4537  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
426411    2.2682  postgres        GetSnapshotData
322938    1.7178  postgres        LWLockAcquire
322236    1.7141  postgres        core_yylex
305471    1.6249  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZeroAligned
281543    1.4976  postgres        expression_tree_walker
270241    1.4375  postgres        XLogInsert
234899    1.2495  postgres        MemoryContextAlloc
210137    1.1178  postgres        ScanKeywordLookup
184857    0.9833  postgres        heap_page_prune
173608    0.9235  postgres        hash_any
153011    0.8139  postgres        _bt_compare
144538    0.7689  postgres        nocachegetattr
131466    0.6993  postgres        fmgr_info_cxt_security
131001    0.6968  postgres        grouping_planner
130808    0.6958  postgres        LWLockRelease
124112    0.6602  postgres        PinBuffer
120745    0.6423  postgres        LockAcquireExtended
112992    0.6010  postgres        ExecInitExpr
112830    0.6002  postgres        lappend
112311    0.5974  postgres        new_list
110368    0.5871  postgres        check_stack_depth
106036    0.5640  postgres        AllocSetFree
102565    0.5456  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZero
94689     0.5037  postgres        SearchSysCache
 
Do you want line numbers or lower percentages?
 
Two runs:
 
tps = 21946.961196 (including connections establishing)
tps = 22911.873227 (including connections establishing)
 
For write transactions, that seems pretty respectable.
 
-Kevin

  11. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> — 2011-11-18T19:10:43Z

    
Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> schrieb:

>Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> Any chance you can run oprofile (on either branch, don't really
>> care) against the 32 client test and post the results?
> 
>Besides the other changes we discussed, I boosted scale to 150 and
>ran at READ COMMITTED isolation level (because all threads promptly
>crashed and burned at REPEATABLE READ -- we desperately need a
>pgbench option to retry a transaction on serialization failure). 
>The oprofile hot spots at half a percent or higher:
> 
>CPU: Intel Core/i7, speed 2262 MHz (estimated)
>Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with
>a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
>samples  %        image name      symbol name
>933394    4.9651  postgres        AllocSetAlloc
>848476    4.5134  postgres        base_yyparse
>719515    3.8274  postgres        SearchCatCache
>461275    2.4537  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
>426411    2.2682  postgres        GetSnapshotData
>322938    1.7178  postgres        LWLockAcquire
>322236    1.7141  postgres        core_yylex
>305471    1.6249  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZeroAligned
>281543    1.4976  postgres        expression_tree_walker
>270241    1.4375  postgres        XLogInsert
>234899    1.2495  postgres        MemoryContextAlloc
>210137    1.1178  postgres        ScanKeywordLookup
>184857    0.9833  postgres        heap_page_prune
>173608    0.9235  postgres        hash_any
>153011    0.8139  postgres        _bt_compare
>144538    0.7689  postgres        nocachegetattr
>131466    0.6993  postgres        fmgr_info_cxt_security
>131001    0.6968  postgres        grouping_planner
>130808    0.6958  postgres        LWLockRelease
>124112    0.6602  postgres        PinBuffer
>120745    0.6423  postgres        LockAcquireExtended
>112992    0.6010  postgres        ExecInitExpr
>112830    0.6002  postgres        lappend
>112311    0.5974  postgres        new_list
>110368    0.5871  postgres        check_stack_depth
>106036    0.5640  postgres        AllocSetFree
>102565    0.5456  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZero
>94689     0.5037  postgres        SearchSysCache
That profile looks like you ran pgbench with -m simple. How does it look with prepared instead?

Andres
>-- 
>Sent via pgsql-hackers mailing list (pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org)
>To make changes to your subscription:
>http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-hackers

  12. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T19:24:07Z

    "anarazel@anarazel.de" <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> Kevin Grittner <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> schrieb:
 
>>samples  %        image name      symbol name
>>933394    4.9651  postgres        AllocSetAlloc
>>848476    4.5134  postgres        base_yyparse
>>719515    3.8274  postgres        SearchCatCache
 
> That profile looks like you ran pgbench with -m simple. How does
> it look with prepared instead?
 
samples  %        image name      symbol name
495463    3.6718  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
490971    3.6385  postgres        GetSnapshotData
443965    3.2902  postgres        LWLockAcquire
443566    3.2872  postgres        AllocSetAlloc
302388    2.2409  postgres        XLogInsert
286889    2.1261  postgres        SearchCatCache
246417    1.8262  postgres        PostgresMain
235018    1.7417  postgres        heap_page_prune
198442    1.4706  postgres        _bt_compare
181446    1.3447  postgres        hash_any
177131    1.3127  postgres        ExecInitExpr
175775    1.3026  postgres        LWLockRelease
152324    1.1288  postgres        PinBuffer
150285    1.1137  postgres        exec_bind_message
145214    1.0762  postgres        fmgr_info_cxt_security
140493    1.0412  postgres        s_lock
124162    0.9201  postgres        LockAcquireExtended
120429    0.8925  postgres        MemoryContextAlloc
117076    0.8676  postgres        pfree
116493    0.8633  postgres        AllocSetFree
105027    0.7783  postgres        pgstat_report_activity
101407    0.7515  postgres        ProcArrayLockAcquire
100797    0.7470  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZeroAligned
98360     0.7289  postgres        ProcArrayLockRelease
86938     0.6443  postgres        heap_hot_search_buffer
82635     0.6124  postgres        hash_search
79902     0.5921  postgres        errstart
79465     0.5889  postgres        HeapTupleSatisfiesVacuum
78709     0.5833  postgres        ResourceOwnerReleaseInternal
76068     0.5637  postgres        ExecModifyTable
73043     0.5413  postgres        heap_update
72175     0.5349  postgres        strlcpy
71253     0.5280  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZero
 
tps = 27392.219364 (including connections establishing)
 
-Kevin

  13. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T19:36:59Z

    "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:

> samples  %        image name      symbol name
> 495463    3.6718  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
 
When lines like these show up in the annotated version, I'm
impressed that we're still finding gains as big as we are:
 
 44613  0.3306 :        if (segp == NULL)
               :                hash_corrupted(hashp);
 
101910  0.7552 :        keysize = hashp->keysize;       /* ditto */
 
There goes over 1% of my server run time, right there!
 
Of course, these make no sense unless there is cache line
contention, which is why that area is bearing fruit.
 
-Kevin

  14. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T19:55:34Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>>  I think so.  My take was that it was showing 32 of 64 *threads*
>> active -- the hyperthreading funkiness.  Is there something in
>> particular you'd like me to check?
> 
> Not really, just don't understand the number.
 
I'm having trouble resolving the vmstat numbers I got during the
32-client pgbench runs which modified data.
 
-M simple:
 
procs --------------memory------------- ---swap-- -----io-----
 r  b   swpd   free      buff    cache   si   so    bi     bo
 ----system---- -----cpu------
     in      cs us sy id wa st
30  1   4464 513492 205564572 54472124    0    0     0  78170
 621724 1246300 30  8 61  1  0
27  1   4464 509288 205564572 54474600    0    0     0 125620
 599403 1192046 29  8 63  1  0
35  1   4464 508368 205564572 54476996    0    0     0  89801
 595939 1186496 29  8 63  0  0
25  0   4464 506088 205564572 54478668    0    0     0  90121
 594800 1189649 28  8 63  0  0
 
-M prepared:
 
procs --------------memory-------------- ---swap-- -----io-----
 r  b   swpd    free      buff    cache   si   so    bi     bo
 ----system---- -----cpu------
     in      cs us sy id wa st
28  0   5612 1204404 205107344 54230536    0    0     0  93212
 527284 1456417 22  9 69  0  0
 8  1   5612 1202044 205107344 54233336    0    0     0  93217
 512819 1417457 21  9 70  1  0
17  1   5612 1201892 205107344 54236048    0    0     0 132699
 502333 1412878 21  9 70  0  0
19  1   5612 1199208 205107344 54238936    0    0     0  93612
 519113 1484386 21  9 69  0  0
 
So 60% or 70% idle without any I/O wait time.  I don't know how to
explain that.
 
-Kevin

  15. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> — 2011-11-18T20:02:44Z

    On Friday, November 18, 2011 08:36:59 PM Kevin Grittner wrote:
> "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> > samples  %        image name      symbol name
> > 495463    3.6718  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
> 
> When lines like these show up in the annotated version, I'm
> impressed that we're still finding gains as big as we are:
> 
>  44613  0.3306 :        if (segp == NULL)
> 
>                :                hash_corrupted(hashp);
> 
> 101910  0.7552 :        keysize = hashp->keysize;       /* ditto */
When doing line-level profiles I would suggest looking at the instructions. 
Quite often the line shown doesn't have much to do whats executed as the 
compiler tries to schedule instructions cleverly.
Also in many situations the shown cost doesn't actually lie in the instruction 
shown but in some previous one. The shown instruction e.g. has to wait for the 
result of the earlier instructions. Pipelining makes that hard to correctly 
observe.

A simplified example would be something like:

bool func(int a, int b, int c){
   int res = a / b;
   if(res == c){
       return true;
   }
   return false;
}

Likely the instruction showing up in the profile would be the comparison. Which 
obviously is not the really expensive part...


> There goes over 1% of my server run time, right there!
> 
> Of course, these make no sense unless there is cache line
> contention, which is why that area is bearing fruit.
I don't think cache line contention is the most likely candidate here.  Simple 
cache-misses seem far more likely. In combination with pipeline stalls...

Newer cpus (nehalem+) can measure stalled cycles which can be really useful 
when analyzing performance. I don't remember how to do that with oprofile right 
now though as I use perf these days (its -e stalled-cycles{frontend|backend} 
there}).

Andres

  16. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T20:16:01Z

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
 
> When doing line-level profiles I would suggest looking at the
> instructions.
 
What's the best way to do that?
 
> I don't think cache line contention is the most likely candidate
> here.  Simple cache-misses seem far more likely. In combination
> with pipeline stalls...
> 
> Newer cpus (nehalem+) can measure stalled cycles which can be
> really useful when analyzing performance. I don't remember how to
> do that with oprofile right now though as I use perf these days
> (its -e stalled-cycles{frontend|backend} there}).
 
When I run oprofile, I still always go back to this post by Tom:
 
http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2009-06/msg00154.php
 
Can anyone provide such a "cheat sheet" for perf?  I could give that
a try if I knew how.
 
-Kevin

  17. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> — 2011-11-18T22:12:02Z

    On Friday, November 18, 2011 09:16:01 PM Kevin Grittner wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> > When doing line-level profiles I would suggest looking at the
> > instructions.
> What's the best way to do that?
I think opannotate -a -s produces output with instructions/code intermingled.

> > I don't think cache line contention is the most likely candidate
> > here.  Simple cache-misses seem far more likely. In combination
> > with pipeline stalls...
> > 
> > Newer cpus (nehalem+) can measure stalled cycles which can be
> > really useful when analyzing performance. I don't remember how to
> > do that with oprofile right now though as I use perf these days
> > (its -e stalled-cycles{frontend|backend} there}).
> 
> When I run oprofile, I still always go back to this post by Tom:
> http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2009-06/msg00154.php
Hrm. I am on the train and for unknown reasons the only sensible working
protocols are smtp + pop.... Waiting.... Waiting....
Sorry, too slow/high latency atm. I wrote everything below and another mail
and the page still hasn't loaded.

oprofile can produces graphes as well (--callgraph). for both tools you need
-fno-omit-frame-pointers to get usable graphs.

> Can anyone provide such a "cheat sheet" for perf?  I could give that
> a try if I knew how.
Unfortunately for sensible results the kernel needs to be rather new.
I would say > 2.6.28 or so (just guessed).

# to record activity
perf record [-g|--call-graph] program|-p pid 

# to view a summation
perf report

graph:
# Overhead   Command      Shared Object                                     Symbol
# ........  ........  .................  .........................................
#
     4.09%  postgres  postgres           [.] slab_alloc_dyn
            |
            --- slab_alloc_dyn
               |          
               |--18.52%-- new_list
               |          |          
               |          |--63.79%-- lappend
               |          |          |          
               |          |          |--13.40%-- find_usable_indexes
               |          |          |          create_index_paths
               |          |          |          set_rel_pathlist
               |          |          |          make_one_rel

flat:

# Overhead   Command      Shared Object                                     Symbol
# ........  ........  .................  .........................................
#
     5.10%  postgres  [vdso]             [.] 0x7ffff3d8d770  
     4.26%  postgres  postgres           [.] base_yyparse
     3.88%  postgres  postgres           [.] slab_alloc_dyn
     2.82%  postgres  postgres           [.] core_yylex
     2.37%  postgres  postgres           [.] SearchCatCache
     1.85%  postgres  libc-2.13.so       [.] __memcpy_ssse3
     1.66%  postgres  libc-2.13.so       [.] __GI___strcmp_ssse3
     1.23%  postgres  postgres           [.] MemoryContextAlloc


# to view a line/source/instruction level view
perf annotate -l symbol

...
         :
         :              /*
         :               * one-time startup overhead for each cache
         :               */
         :              if (cache->cc_tupdesc == NULL)
    0.35 :        6e81fd:       48 83 7f 28 00          cmpq   $0x0,0x28(%rdi)
 /home/andres/src/postgresql/build/optimize/../../src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c:1070
    4.15 :        6e8202:       0f 84 54 04 00 00       je     6e865c <SearchCatCache+0x47c>
         :      #endif
         :
         :              /*
         :               * initialize the search key information
         :               */
         :              memcpy(cur_skey, cache->cc_skey, sizeof(cur_skey));
    0.00 :        6e8208:       48 8d bd a0 fe ff ff    lea    -0x160(%rbp),%rdi
    0.17 :        6e820f:       49 8d 77 70             lea    0x70(%r15),%rsi
    0.00 :        6e8213:       b9 24 00 00 00          mov    $0x24,%ecx
 /home/andres/src/postgresql/build/optimize/../../src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c:1080
   33.22 :        6e8218:       f3 48 a5                rep movsq %ds:(%rsi),%es:(%rdi)
         :              cur_skey[0].sk_argument = v1;
 /home/andres/src/postgresql/build/optimize/../../src/backend/utils/cache/catcache.c:1081
    1.56 :        6e821b:       48 89 9d e0 fe ff ff    mov    %rbx,-0x120(%rbp)
...

# get heaps of stats from something
perf stat -ddd someprogram|-p pid

       1242.409965 task-clock                #    0.824 CPUs utilized           [100.00%]
            14,572 context-switches          #    0.012 M/sec                   [100.00%]
               264 CPU-migrations            #    0.000 M/sec                   [100.00%]
                 0 page-faults               #    0.000 M/sec                  
     2,854,775,135 cycles                    #    2.298 GHz                     [26.28%]
   <not supported> stalled-cycles-frontend 
   <not supported> stalled-cycles-backend  
     2,024,997,785 instructions              #    0.71  insns per cycle         [25.25%]
       387,240,903 branches                  #  311.685 M/sec                   [26.51%]
        21,756,886 branch-misses             #    5.62% of all branches         [26.26%]
       753,912,137 L1-dcache-loads           #  606.814 M/sec                   [13.24%]
        52,733,007 L1-dcache-load-misses     #    6.99% of all L1-dcache hits   [14.72%]
        35,006,406 LLC-loads                 #   28.176 M/sec                   [15.46%]
            26,673 LLC-load-misses           #    0.08% of all LL-cache hits    [13.38%]
     1,855,654,347 L1-icache-loads           # 1493.593 M/sec                   [12.63%]
        52,169,033 L1-icache-load-misses     #    2.81% of all L1-icache hits   [12.88%]
       761,475,250 dTLB-loads                #  612.902 M/sec                   [13.37%]
         4,457,558 dTLB-load-misses          #    0.59% of all dTLB cache hits  [13.12%]
     2,049,753,137 iTLB-loads                # 1649.820 M/sec                   [20.09%]
         4,139,394 iTLB-load-misses          #    0.20% of all iTLB cache hits  [19.31%]
         3,705,429 L1-dcache-prefetches      #    2.982 M/sec                   [19.64%]
   <not supported> L1-dcache-prefetch-misses

       1.507855345 seconds time elapsed

-r can repeat a command and gives you the standard derivation...

# show whats the system executing overall
perf top -az

# get help
perf help (record|report|annotate|stat|...)

In new versions many commands (those that produce pageable text) take --stdio
and --tui to select between two interfaces. I personally fnd --tui unusable.

I am not really sure how good the results are compared to oprofile I
just prefer the ui by far... Also the overhead seems to be measurably 
smaller. Also its usable by every user, not just root...

Hope that suffices? I have no problem answering further questions, so ...

Andres

  18. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> — 2011-11-18T22:36:31Z

    On Friday, November 18, 2011 11:12:02 PM Andres Freund wrote:
> On Friday, November 18, 2011 09:16:01 PM Kevin Grittner wrote:
> > Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> > > When doing line-level profiles I would suggest looking at the
> > > instructions.
> > 
> > What's the best way to do that?
> 
> I think opannotate -a -s produces output with instructions/code
> intermingled.
> 
> > > I don't think cache line contention is the most likely candidate
> > > here.  Simple cache-misses seem far more likely. In combination
> > > with pipeline stalls...
> > > 
> > > Newer cpus (nehalem+) can measure stalled cycles which can be
> > > really useful when analyzing performance. I don't remember how to
> > > do that with oprofile right now though as I use perf these days
> > > (its -e stalled-cycles{frontend|backend} there}).
> > 
> > When I run oprofile, I still always go back to this post by Tom:
> > http://archives.postgresql.org/pgsql-performance/2009-06/msg00154.php
> 
> Hrm. I am on the train and for unknown reasons the only sensible working
> protocols are smtp + pop.... Waiting.... Waiting....
> Sorry, too slow/high latency atm. I wrote everything below and another mail
> and the page still hasn't loaded.
> 
> oprofile can produces graphes as well (--callgraph). for both tools you
> need -fno-omit-frame-pointers to get usable graphs.
> 
> > Can anyone provide such a "cheat sheet" for perf?  I could give that
> > a try if I knew how.
> 
> Unfortunately for sensible results the kernel needs to be rather new.
> I would say > 2.6.28 or so (just guessed).
> 
> # to record activity
> perf record [-g|--call-graph] program|-p pid
> 
> # to view a summation
> perf report

> # get heaps of stats from something
> perf stat -ddd someprogram|-p pid

> # show whats the system executing overall
> perf top -az
> 
> # get help
> perf help (record|report|annotate|stat|...)
> 
...
I forgot that there is also 

# get a list of event types
perf list

# measure somethign for a specidif event
perf (record|stat|top) -e some_event_type



Andres

  19. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T23:18:07Z

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
 
> I think opannotate -a -s produces output with instructions/code
> intermingled.
 
Thanks.  I'll check out perf later (thanks for the tips!), but for
now, here's the function which was at the top of my oprofile
results, annotated with those options.  I'm afraid it's a bit
intimidating to me -- the last time I did much with X86 assembly
language was in the mid-80s, on an 80286.  :-/  Hopefully, since
this is at the top of the oprofile results when running with
prepared statements, it will be of use to somebody.
 
The instructions which are shown as having that 1% still seem odd to
me, but as you say, they were probably actually waiting for some
previous operation to finish:
 
 43329  0.3211 :  70b56a:	test   %rbp,%rbp
 
 99903  0.7404 :  70b58a:	mov    %rax,0x18(%rsp)
 
If anyone wants any other detail from what I captured, let me know.
 
-Kevin

  20. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-18T23:19:15Z

    On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 2:05 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
>> Any chance you can run oprofile (on either branch, don't really
>> care) against the 32 client test and post the results?
>
> [ oprofile results ]

Hmm.  That looks a lot like a profile with no lock contention at all.
Since I see XLogInsert in there, I assume this must be a pgbench write
test on unlogged tables?  How close am I?

I was actually thinking it would be interesting to oprofile the
read-only test; see if we can figure out where those slowdowns are
coming from.

> Two runs:
>
> tps = 21946.961196 (including connections establishing)
> tps = 22911.873227 (including connections establishing)
>
> For write transactions, that seems pretty respectable.

Very.  What do you get without the patch?

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  21. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-18T23:46:37Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote: 
 
> Hmm.  That looks a lot like a profile with no lock contention at
> all.  Since I see XLogInsert in there, I assume this must be a
> pgbench write test on unlogged tables?  How close am I?
 
Not unless pgbench on HEAD does that by default.  Here are the
relevant statements:
 
$prefix/bin/pgbench -i -s 150
$prefix/bin/pgbench -T $time -c $clients -j $clients >>$resultfile
 
Perhaps the Intel cores implement the relevant primitives better? 
Maybe I didn't run the profile or reports the right way?
 
> I was actually thinking it would be interesting to oprofile the
> read-only test; see if we can figure out where those slowdowns are
> coming from.
 
I'll plan on doing that this weekend.
 
>> tps = 21946.961196 (including connections establishing)
>> tps = 22911.873227 (including connections establishing)
>>
>> For write transactions, that seems pretty respectable.
> 
> Very.  What do you get without the patch?
 
[quick runs a couple tests that way]
 
Single run with -M simple:
 
tps = 23018.314292 (including connections establishing)
 
Single run with -M prepared:
 
tps = 27910.621044 (including connections establishing)
 
So, the patch appears to hinder performance in this environment,
although certainty is quite low with so few samples.  I'll schedule
a spectrum of runs before I leave this evening (very soon).
 
-Kevin

  22. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> — 2011-11-19T01:03:01Z

    On Fri, Nov 18, 2011 at 6:46 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
>>> tps = 21946.961196 (including connections establishing)
>>> tps = 22911.873227 (including connections establishing)
>>>
>>> For write transactions, that seems pretty respectable.
>>
>> Very.  What do you get without the patch?
>
> [quick runs a couple tests that way]
>
> Single run with -M simple:
>
> tps = 23018.314292 (including connections establishing)
>
> Single run with -M prepared:
>
> tps = 27910.621044 (including connections establishing)
>
> So, the patch appears to hinder performance in this environment,
> although certainty is quite low with so few samples.  I'll schedule
> a spectrum of runs before I leave this evening (very soon).

Hmm.  There's obviously something that's different in your environment
or configuration from what I tested, but I don't know what it is.  The
fact that your scale factor is larger than shared_buffers might
matter; or Intel vs. AMD.  Or maybe you're running with
synchronous_commit=on?

-- 
Robert Haas
EnterpriseDB: http://www.enterprisedb.com
The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company

  23. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> — 2011-11-19T03:08:16Z

    On Saturday, November 19, 2011 12:18:07 AM Kevin Grittner wrote:
> Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> wrote:
> > I think opannotate -a -s produces output with instructions/code
> > intermingled.
> 
> Thanks.  I'll check out perf later (thanks for the tips!), but for
> now, here's the function which was at the top of my oprofile
> results, annotated with those options.  I'm afraid it's a bit
> intimidating to me -- the last time I did much with X86 assembly
> language was in the mid-80s, on an 80286.  :-/ 
While my assembly knoweldge surely isn't from the 80s be assured that I find it 
intimidating as well ;)

> Hopefully, since
> this is at the top of the oprofile results when running with
> prepared statements, it will be of use to somebody.
I think in quite many situations hash_search_with_hash_value is rather 
noticeable in the profiles. Even without concurrency...

Looking at your annotation output the code seems to be almost entirely stalled 
waiting for memory.
The first stall is after the first reading memory access which is likely to be 
uncached (the first cacheline of the HTAB is accessed before but that will be 
in the cache). The interesting thing is that I would have expected a higher 
likelihood for this to stay in the cache.
  2225  0.0165 :  70b543:	mov    (%rdi),%r15
               :static inline uint32
               :calc_bucket(HASHHDR *hctl, uint32 hash_val)
               :{
               :	uint32		bucket;
               :
               :	bucket = hash_val & hctl->high_mask;
  4544  0.0337 :  70b546:	and    0x2c(%r15),%ebx
               :	if (bucket > hctl->max_bucket)
 53409  0.3958 :  70b54a:	cmp    0x28(%r15),%ebx
               :  70b54e:	jbe    70b554 <hash_search_with_hash_value+0x34>

So a stall here is not that surprising.


Here we fetch data from memory which is unlikely to be prefetchable and then 
require the result from that fetch. Note how  segp = hashp->dir[segment_num]; 
is distributed over line 52, 64, 83.

               :	segp = hashp->dir[segment_num];
  2062  0.0153 :  70b562:	shr    %cl,%eax
   309  0.0023 :  70b564:	mov    %eax,%eax
   643  0.0048 :  70b566:	mov    (%rdx,%rax,8),%rbp
               :
               :	if (segp == NULL)
 43329  0.3211 :  70b56a:	test   %rbp,%rbp





The next cacheline is referenced here. Again a fetch from memory which is soon 
after needed to continue.
Unless I misunderstood the code-flow this disproves my theory that we might 
have many collisions as that test seems to be outside the test (
               :	prevBucketPtr = &segp[segment_ndx];
               :	currBucket = *prevBucketPtr;
   122 9.0e-04 :  70b586:	mov    0x0(%rbp),%rbx
               :
               :	/*
               :	 * Follow collision chain looking for matching key
               :	 */
               :	match = hashp->match;		/* save one fetch in inner 
loop */
               :	keysize = hashp->keysize;	/* ditto */
 99903  0.7404 :  70b58a:	mov    %rax,0x18(%rsp)
               :
               :	while (currBucket != NULL)
  1066  0.0079 :  70b58f:	test   %rbx,%rbx




line 136 is the first time the contents of the current bucket is needed. Thats 
why the test is so noticeable.
               :		currBucket = *prevBucketPtr;
   655  0.0049 :  70b5a3:	mov    (%rbx),%rbx
               :	 * Follow collision chain looking for matching key
               :	 */
               :	match = hashp->match;		/* save one fetch in inner 
loop */
               :	keysize = hashp->keysize;	/* ditto */
               :
               :	while (currBucket != NULL)
   608  0.0045 :  70b5a6:	test   %rbx,%rbx
               :  70b5a9:	je     70b5d0 <hash_search_with_hash_value+0xb0>
               :	{
               :		if (currBucket->hashvalue == hashvalue &&
  3504  0.0260 :  70b5ab:	cmp    %r12d,0x8(%rbx)
 98486  0.7299 :  70b5af:	nop
  1233  0.0091 :  70b5b0:	jne    70b5a0 <hash_search_with_hash_value+0x80>


That covers all the slow points in the function. And unless I am missing 
something those are all the fetched cachelines of that function... For 
HASH_FIND that is.


So I think that reinforces my belive that ordinary cachemisses are the culprit 
here. Which is to be excepted in a hashtable...


Andres


PS: No idea whether that rambling made sense to anyone... But I looked at that 
function fo  the first time ;)

  24. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-20T16:33:47Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> Hmm.  There's obviously something that's different in your
> environment or configuration from what I tested, but I don't know
> what it is. The fact that your scale factor is larger than
> shared_buffers might matter; or Intel vs. AMD.  Or maybe you're
> running with synchronous_commit=on?
 
Yes, I had synchronous_commit = on for these runs.  Here are the
settings:
 
                cat >> $PGDATA/postgresql.conf <<EOM;
max_connections = 200
max_pred_locks_per_transaction = 256
shared_buffers = 10GB
maintenance_work_mem = 1GB
checkpoint_segments = 300
checkpoint_timeout = 15min
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
wal_writer_delay = 20ms
seq_page_cost = 0.1
random_page_cost = 0.1
cpu_tuple_cost = 0.05
effective_cache_size = 40GB
default_transaction_isolation = '$iso'
EOM
 
Is there any chance that having pg_xlog on a separate RAID 10 set of
drives with it's own BBU controller would explain anything?  I mean,
I always knew that was a good idea for a big, heavily-loaded box,
but I remember being surprised at how *big* a difference that made
when a box accidentally went into production without moving the
pg_xlog directory there.

There is one other things which might matter, I didn't use the -n
pgbench option, and on the sample you showed, you were using it.
 
Here is the median of five from the latest runs.  On these
read/write tests there was very little spread within each set of
five samples, with no extreme outliers like I had on the SELECT-only
tests.  In the first position s means simple protocol and p means
prepared protocol.  In the second position m means master, f means
with the flexlock patch.
 
sm1 tps = 1092.269228 (including connections establishing)
sf1 tps = 1090.511552 (including connections establishing)
sm2 tps = 2171.867100 (including connections establishing)
sf2 tps = 2158.609189 (including connections establishing)
sm4 tps = 4278.541453 (including connections establishing)
sf4 tps = 4269.921594 (including connections establishing)
sm8 tps = 8472.257182 (including connections establishing)
sf8 tps = 8476.150588 (including connections establishing)
sm16 tps = 15905.074160 (including connections establishing)
sf16 tps = 15937.372689 (including connections establishing)
sm32 tps = 22331.817413 (including connections establishing)
sf32 tps = 22861.258757 (including connections establishing)
sm64 tps = 26388.391614 (including connections establishing)
sf64 tps = 26529.152361 (including connections establishing)
sm80 tps = 25617.651194 (including connections establishing)
sf80 tps = 26560.541237 (including connections establishing)
sm96 tps = 24105.455175 (including connections establishing)
sf96 tps = 26569.244384 (including connections establishing)
sm128 tps = 21467.530210 (including connections establishing)
sf128 tps = 25883.023093 (including connections establishing)
 
pm1 tps = 1629.265970 (including connections establishing)
pf1 tps = 1619.024905 (including connections establishing)
pm2 tps = 3164.061963 (including connections establishing)
pf2 tps = 3137.469377 (including connections establishing)
pm4 tps = 6114.787505 (including connections establishing)
pf4 tps = 6061.750200 (including connections establishing)
pm8 tps = 11884.534375 (including connections establishing)
pf8 tps = 11870.670086 (including connections establishing)
pm16 tps = 20575.737107 (including connections establishing)
pf16 tps = 20437.648809 (including connections establishing)
pm32 tps = 27664.381103 (including connections establishing)
pf32 tps = 28046.846479 (including connections establishing)
pm64 tps = 26764.294547 (including connections establishing)
pf64 tps = 26631.589294 (including connections establishing)
pm80 tps = 27716.198263 (including connections establishing)
pf80 tps = 28393.642871 (including connections establishing)
pm96 tps = 26616.076293 (including connections establishing)
pf96 tps = 28055.921427 (including connections establishing)
pm128 tps = 23282.912620 (including connections establishing)
pf128 tps = 23072.766829 (including connections establishing)
 
Note that on this 32 core box, performance on the read/write pgbench
is peaking at 64 clients, but without a lot of variance between 32
and 96 clients.  And with the patch, performance still hasn't fallen
off too badly at 128 clients. This is good news in terms of not
having to sweat connection pool sizing quite as much as earlier
releases.
 
Next I will get the profile for the SELECT-only runs.  It seems to
make sense to profile at the peak performance level, which was 64
clients.
 
I can run one more set of tests tonight before I have to give it
back to the guy who's putting it into production.  It sounds like a
set like the above except with synchronous_commit = off might be
desirable?
 
-Kevin

  25. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-20T19:38:06Z

    Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> I was actually thinking it would be interesting to oprofile the
> read-only test; see if we can figure out where those slowdowns are
> coming from.
 
CPU: Intel Core/i7, speed 2262 MHz (estimated)
Counted CPU_CLK_UNHALTED events (Clock cycles when not halted) with
a unit mask of 0x00 (No unit mask) count 100000
samples  %        image name      symbol name
3124242   5.7137  postgres        s_lock
2555554   4.6737  postgres        AllocSetAlloc
2403412   4.3954  postgres        GetSnapshotData
1967132   3.5975  postgres        SearchCatCache
1872176   3.4239  postgres        base_yyparse
1327256   2.4273  postgres        hash_search_with_hash_value
1040131   1.9022  postgres        _bt_compare
1038976   1.9001  postgres        LWLockAcquire
817122    1.4944  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZeroAligned
738321    1.3503  postgres        core_yylex
622613    1.1386  postgres        MemoryContextAlloc
597054    1.0919  postgres        PinBuffer
556138    1.0171  postgres        ScanKeywordLookup
552318    1.0101  postgres        expression_tree_walker
494279    0.9039  postgres        LWLockRelease
488628    0.8936  postgres        hash_any
472906    0.8649  postgres        nocachegetattr
396482    0.7251  postgres        grouping_planner
382974    0.7004  postgres        LockAcquireExtended
375186    0.6861  postgres        AllocSetFree
375072    0.6859  postgres        ProcArrayLockRelease
373668    0.6834  postgres        new_list
365917    0.6692  postgres        fmgr_info_cxt_security
301398    0.5512  postgres        ProcArrayLockAcquire
300647    0.5498  postgres        LockReleaseAll
292073    0.5341  postgres        DirectFunctionCall1Coll
285745    0.5226  postgres        MemoryContextAllocZero
284684    0.5206  postgres        FunctionCall2Coll
282701    0.5170  postgres        SearchSysCache
 
max_connections = 100
max_pred_locks_per_transaction = 64
shared_buffers = 8GB
maintenance_work_mem = 1GB
checkpoint_segments = 300
checkpoint_timeout = 15min
checkpoint_completion_target = 0.9
wal_writer_delay = 20ms
seq_page_cost = 0.1
random_page_cost = 0.1
cpu_tuple_cost = 0.05
effective_cache_size = 40GB
default_transaction_isolation = '$iso'
 
pgbench -i -s 100
pgbench -S -M simple -T 300 -c 80 -j 80
 
transaction type: SELECT only
scaling factor: 100
query mode: simple
number of clients: 80
number of threads: 80
duration: 300 s
number of transactions actually processed: 104391011
tps = 347964.636256 (including connections establishing)
tps = 347976.389034 (excluding connections establishing)
 
vmstat 1 showed differently this time -- no clue why.
 
procs --------------memory------------- ---swap-- -----io----
 r  b   swpd    free      buff    cache   si   so    bi    bo
 ---system---- -----cpu------
    in      cs us sy id wa st
91  0   8196 4189436 203925700 52314492    0    0     0     0
 32255 1522807 85 13  1  0  0
92  0   8196 4189404 203925700 52314492    0    0     0     0
 32796 1525463 85 14  1  0  0
67  0   8196 4189404 203925700 52314488    0    0     0     0
 32343 1527988 85 13  1  0  0
93  0   8196 4189404 203925700 52314488    0    0     0     0
 32701 1535827 85 13  1  0  0
 
-Kevin

  26. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-21T17:14:23Z

    "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
 
> I can run one more set of tests tonight before I have to give it
> back to the guy who's putting it into production.  It sounds like
> a set like the above except with synchronous_commit = off might be
> desirable?
 
OK, that's what I did.  This gave me my best numbers yet for an
updating run of pgbench: tps = 38039.724212 for prepared statements
using the flexlock patch.  This patch is a clear win when you get to
16 clients or more.
 
sm1 tps = 1312.501168 (including connections establishing)
sf1 tps = 1376.678293 (including connections establishing)
sm2 tps = 2705.571856 (including connections establishing)
sf2 tps = 2689.577938 (including connections establishing)
sm4 tps = 5461.403557 (including connections establishing)
sf4 tps = 5447.363103 (including connections establishing)
sm8 tps = 10524.695338 (including connections establishing)
sf8 tps = 10448.012069 (including connections establishing)
sm16 tps = 18952.968472 (including connections establishing)
sf16 tps = 18969.505631 (including connections establishing)
sm32 tps = 27392.393850 (including connections establishing)
sf32 tps = 29225.974112 (including connections establishing)
sm64 tps = 28947.675549 (including connections establishing)
sf64 tps = 31417.536816 (including connections establishing)
sm80 tps = 28053.684182 (including connections establishing)
sf80 tps = 29970.555401 (including connections establishing)
sm96 tps = 25885.679957 (including connections establishing)
sf96 tps = 28581.271436 (including connections establishing)
sm128 tps = 22261.902571 (including connections establishing)
sf128 tps = 24537.566960 (including connections establishing)
 
pm1 tps = 2082.958841 (including connections establishing)
pf1 tps = 2052.328339 (including connections establishing)
pm2 tps = 4287.257860 (including connections establishing)
pf2 tps = 4228.770795 (including connections establishing)
pm4 tps = 8653.196863 (including connections establishing)
pf4 tps = 8592.091631 (including connections establishing)
pm8 tps = 16071.432101 (including connections establishing)
pf8 tps = 16196.992207 (including connections establishing)
pm16 tps = 27146.441216 (including connections establishing)
pf16 tps = 27441.966562 (including connections establishing)
pm32 tps = 34983.352396 (including connections establishing)
pf32 tps = 38039.724212 (including connections establishing)
pm64 tps = 33182.643501 (including connections establishing)
pf64 tps = 34193.732669 (including connections establishing)
pm80 tps = 30686.712607 (including connections establishing)
pf80 tps = 33336.011769 (including connections establishing)
pm96 tps = 24692.015615 (including connections establishing)
pf96 tps = 32907.472665 (including connections establishing)
pm128 tps = 24164.441954 (including connections establishing)
pf128 tps = 25742.670928 (including connections establishing)
 
At lower client numbers the tps values within each set of five
samples were very tightly grouped.  With either protocol, and
whether or not the patch was applied, the higher concurrency groups
tended to be bifurcated within a set of five samples between "good"
and "bad" numbers.  The patch seemed to increase the number of
clients which could be handled without collapse into the bad
numbers.  It really looks like there's some sort of performance
"collapse" at higher concurrency which may or may not happen in any
particular five minute run.  Just as one example, running the simple
protocol with the flexlock patch:
 
tps = 24491.653873 (including connections establishing)
tps = 24537.566960 (including connections establishing)
tps = 28462.276323 (including connections establishing)
tps = 24403.373002 (including connections establishing)
tps = 28458.902549 (including connections establishing)

-Kevin

  27. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> — 2011-11-21T17:19:34Z

    On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 10:44 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> "Kevin Grittner" <Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
>
>> I can run one more set of tests tonight before I have to give it
>> back to the guy who's putting it into production.  It sounds like
>> a set like the above except with synchronous_commit = off might be
>> desirable?
>
> OK, that's what I did.  This gave me my best numbers yet for an
> updating run of pgbench: tps = 38039.724212 for prepared statements
> using the flexlock patch.  This patch is a clear win when you get to
> 16 clients or more.
>

It will be a great help if you could spare few minutes to also test
the patch to take out the frequently accessed PGPROC members to a
different array. We are seeing good improvements on HPUX IA platform
and the AMD Opteron and it will be interesting to know what happens on
the Intel platform too.

http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/4EB7C4C9.9070309@enterprisedb.com

Thanks,
Pavan

-- 
Pavan Deolasee
EnterpriseDB     http://www.enterprisedb.com

  28. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-21T17:31:11Z

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> It will be a great help if you could spare few minutes to also
> test the patch to take out the frequently accessed PGPROC members
> to a different array. We are seeing good improvements on HPUX IA
> platform and the AMD Opteron and it will be interesting to know
> what happens on the Intel platform too.
> 
>
http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/4EB7C4C9.9070309@enterprisedb.com
 
It's going to be hard to arrange more of the 20-hours runs I've been
doing, but I can work in some more abbreviated tests.  What would be
the best test for this?  (I would hate to try and find out I didn't
exercise the right code path.)
 
-Kevin

  29. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> — 2011-11-21T17:38:13Z

    On Mon, Nov 21, 2011 at 11:01 PM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It will be a great help if you could spare few minutes to also
>> test the patch to take out the frequently accessed PGPROC members
>> to a different array. We are seeing good improvements on HPUX IA
>> platform and the AMD Opteron and it will be interesting to know
>> what happens on the Intel platform too.
>>
>>
> http://archives.postgresql.org/message-id/4EB7C4C9.9070309@enterprisedb.com
>
> It's going to be hard to arrange more of the 20-hours runs I've been
> doing, but I can work in some more abbreviated tests.  What would be
> the best test for this?  (I would hate to try and find out I didn't
> exercise the right code path.)
>

I think 2-3 runs with 32 and 128 clients each with prepared statements
should suffice to quickly compare with the other numbers you posted
for the master.

Thanks,
Pavan

-- 
Pavan Deolasee
EnterpriseDB     http://www.enterprisedb.com

  30. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-21T23:10:35Z

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> It will be a great help if you could spare few minutes to also
> test the patch to take out the frequently accessed PGPROC members
> to a different array. We are seeing good improvements on HPUX IA
> platform and the AMD Opteron and it will be interesting to know
> what happens on the Intel platform too.
 
For a read only comparison (which was run using the simple
protocol), using identical settings to the previous master run, but
with the PGPROC split patch:
 
m32 tps = 201738.209348 (including connections establishing)
p32 tps = 201620.966988 (including connections establishing)

m128 tps = 352159.631878 (including connections establishing)
p128 tps = 363998.703900 (including connections establishing)
 
Clearly a win at 128 clients; not at 32.
 
For updates:
 
sm32 tps = 27392.393850 (including connections establishing)
sp32 tps = 27995.784333 (including connections establishing) 
 
sm128 tps = 22261.902571 (including connections establishing)
sp128 tps = 23690.408272 (including connections establishing)
 
pm32 tps = 34983.352396 (including connections establishing)
pp32 tps = 36076.373389 (including connections establishing)
 
pm128 tps = 24164.441954 (including connections establishing)
pp128 tps = 27070.824588 (including connections establishing)
 
That's a pretty decisive win all around.
 
-Kevin

  31. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> — 2011-11-22T18:04:48Z

    On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 4:40 AM, Kevin Grittner
<Kevin.Grittner@wicourts.gov> wrote:
> Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> It will be a great help if you could spare few minutes to also
>> test the patch to take out the frequently accessed PGPROC members
>> to a different array. We are seeing good improvements on HPUX IA
>> platform and the AMD Opteron and it will be interesting to know
>> what happens on the Intel platform too.
>
> For a read only comparison (which was run using the simple
> protocol), using identical settings to the previous master run, but
> with the PGPROC split patch:
>
> m32 tps = 201738.209348 (including connections establishing)
> p32 tps = 201620.966988 (including connections establishing)
>
> m128 tps = 352159.631878 (including connections establishing)
> p128 tps = 363998.703900 (including connections establishing)
>
> Clearly a win at 128 clients; not at 32.
>
> For updates:
>
> sm32 tps = 27392.393850 (including connections establishing)
> sp32 tps = 27995.784333 (including connections establishing)
>
> sm128 tps = 22261.902571 (including connections establishing)
> sp128 tps = 23690.408272 (including connections establishing)
>
> pm32 tps = 34983.352396 (including connections establishing)
> pp32 tps = 36076.373389 (including connections establishing)
>
> pm128 tps = 24164.441954 (including connections establishing)
> pp128 tps = 27070.824588 (including connections establishing)
>
> That's a pretty decisive win all around.
>

Thanks for running those tests. The numbers are not that bad, but
definitely not as good as we saw on some other platforms. But its
possible that they may improve in percentage terms with even more
number of clients on this box. And given that we are seeing big gains
on other platforms, hopefully it will give us confident to proceed
with the patch.

Thanks,
Pavan

-- 
Pavan Deolasee
EnterpriseDB     http://www.enterprisedb.com

  32. Re: testing ProcArrayLock patches

    Kevin Grittner <kevin.grittner@wicourts.gov> — 2011-11-22T19:04:01Z

    Pavan Deolasee <pavan.deolasee@gmail.com> wrote:
 
> The numbers are not that bad, but definitely not as good as we saw
> on some other platforms.
 
Well, this machine is definitely designed to hold up under high
concurrency.  As I understand it, each core is the memory manager
for two 4GB DIMMs, with two channels to them, each with two buffers.
The way the cores are connected, a core never needs to go through
more than one other core to get to memory not directly managed, and
that uses "snoop" technology which hands the cached data right over
from one core to the other when possible, rather than making the
core which now owns the cache line pull it from RAM.  It seems the
2.6.32 kernel is able to manage that technology in a reasonable
fashion.
 
At first I was surprised to see performance top out on the update
tests between 80 and 96 clients.  But then, that lands almost
exactly where my old reliable ((2 * core count) + effective spindle
count) would predict.  The SELECT only tests peaked at 64 clients,
but those were fully cached, so effective spindle count was zero,
again fitting the formula.  So these optimizations seem to me to
break down the barriers which had previously capped the number of
clients which could be handled, letting them peak at their "natural"
levels.
 
> But its possible that they may improve in percentage terms with
> even more number of clients on this box.
 
I think so; I think this box is just so scalable that at 128
clients we were just barely getting past the "knee" in the
performance graphs to where these patches help most.
 
-Kevin