Horton

Re: AIO v2.5

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

View thread
From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Antonin Houska <ah@cybertec.at>
Cc: Noah Misch <noah@leadboat.com>, pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org, Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>, Heikki Linnakangas <hlinnaka@iki.fi>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Jakub Wartak <jakub.wartak@enterprisedb.com>, Jelte Fennema-Nio <postgres@jeltef.nl>
Date: 2025-03-14T19:58:43Z
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 →

  1. aio: Fix assertion, clarify README

  2. aio: Fix reference to outdated name

  3. aio: Fix possible state confusions due to interrupt processing

  4. aio: Improve debug logging around waiting for IOs

  5. aio: Fix crash potential for pg_aios views due to late state update

  6. Increase BAS_BULKREAD based on effective_io_concurrency

  7. localbuf: Add Valgrind buffer access instrumentation

  8. aio: Make AIO more compatible with valgrind

  9. aio: Avoid spurious coverity warning

  10. tests: Fix incompatibility of test_aio with *_FORCE_RELEASE

  11. tests: Cope with WARNINGs during failed CREATE DB on windows

  12. aio: Add errcontext for processing I/Os for another backend

  13. aio: Add README.md explaining higher level design

  14. aio: Minor comment improvements

  15. aio: Add test_aio module

  16. aio: Add pg_aios view

  17. docs: Add acronym and glossary entries for I/O and AIO

  18. Enable IO concurrency on all systems

  19. read_stream: Introduce and use optional batchmode support

  20. docs: Reframe track_io_timing related docs as wait time

  21. bufmgr: Use AIO in StartReadBuffers()

  22. bufmgr: Implement AIO read support

  23. aio: Add WARNING result status

  24. Let caller of PageIsVerified() control ignore_checksum_failure

  25. pgstat: Allow checksum errors to be reported in critical sections

  26. Add errhint_internal()

  27. localbuf: Track pincount in BufferDesc as well

  28. aio, bufmgr: Comment fixes/improvements

  29. Fix mis-attribution of checksum failure stats to the wrong database

  30. aio: Implement support for reads in smgr/md/fd

  31. aio: Add io_method=io_uring

  32. aio: Add liburing dependency

  33. aio: Rename pgaio_io_prep_* to pgaio_io_start_*

  34. aio: Pass result of local callbacks to ->report_return

  35. aio: Be more paranoid about interrupts

  36. Redefine max_files_per_process to control additionally opened files

  37. aio: Change prefix of PgAioResultStatus values to PGAIO_RS_

  38. bufmgr: Improve stats when a buffer is read in concurrently

  39. aio: Add io_method=worker

  40. aio: Infrastructure for io_method=worker

  41. aio: Add core asynchronous I/O infrastructure

  42. aio: Basic subsystem initialization

  43. tests: Expand temp table tests to some pin related matters

  44. localbuf: Introduce FlushLocalBuffer()

  45. localbuf: Introduce TerminateLocalBufferIO()

  46. localbuf: Fix dangerous coding pattern in GetLocalVictimBuffer()

  47. localbuf: Introduce StartLocalBufferIO()

  48. localbuf: Introduce InvalidateLocalBuffer()

  49. Allow lwlocks to be disowned

  50. Make jsonb casts to scalar types translate JSON null to SQL NULL.

  51. bufmgr/smgr: Don't cross segment boundaries in StartReadBuffers()

  52. Use aux process resource owner in walsender

  53. bufmgr: Return early in ScheduleBufferTagForWriteback() if fsync=off

Hi,

On 2025-03-14 15:43:15 -0400, Andres Freund wrote:
> Open items:
>
> - The upstream BAS_BULKREAD is so small that throughput is substantially worse
>   once a table reaches 1/4 shared_buffers. That patch in the patchset as-is is
>   probably not good enough, although I am not sure about that
>
>
> - The set_max_safe_fds() issue for io_uring
>
>
> - Right now effective_io_concurrency cannot be set > 0 on Windows and other
>   platforms that lack posix_fadvise. But with AIO we can read ahead without
>   posix_fadvise().
>
>   It'd not really make anything worse than today to not remove the limit, but
>   it'd be pretty weird to prevent windows etc from benefiting from AIO.  Need
>   to look around and see whether it would require anything other than doc
>   changes.

A fourth, smaller, question:

- Should the docs for debug_io_direct be rephrased and if so, how?

  Without read-stream-AIO debug_io_direct=data has completely unusable
  performance if there's ever any data IO - and if there's no IO there's no
  point in using the option.

  Now there is a certain set of workloads where performance with
  debug_io_direct=data can be better than master, sometimes substantially
  so. But at the same time, without support for at least:

  - AIO writes for at least checkpointer, bgwriter

    doing one synchronous IO for each buffer is ... slow.


  - read-streamified index vacuuming


  And probably also:
  - AIO-ified writes for writes executed by backends, e.g. due to strategies

    Doing one synchronous IO for each buffer is ... slow. And e.g. with COPY
    we do a *lot* of those. OTOH, it could be fine if most modifications are
    done via INSERTs instead of COPY.


  - prefetching for non-BHS index accesses

    Without prefetching, a well correlated index-range scan will be orders of
    magnitude slower with DIO.


  - Anything bypassing shared_buffers, like RelationCopyStorage() or
    bulk_write.c will be extremely slow

    The only saving grace is that these aren't all *that* common.


Due to those constraints I think it's pretty clear we can't remove the debug_
prefix at this time.

Perhaps it's worth going from

       <para>
        Currently this feature reduces performance, and is intended for
        developer testing only.
       </para>
to
       <para>
        Currently this feature reduces performance in many workloads, and is
        intended for testing only.
       </para>

I.e. qualify the downside with "many workloads" and widen the audience ever so
slightly?

Greetings,

Andres Freund