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Re: Reduce timing overhead of EXPLAIN ANALYZE using rdtsc?

Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>

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From: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
To: Lukas Fittl <lukas@fittl.com>
Cc: John Naylor <johncnaylorls@gmail.com>, Jakub Wartak <jakub.wartak@enterprisedb.com>, Hannu Krosing <hannuk@google.com>, Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>, Pavel Stehule <pavel.stehule@gmail.com>, vignesh C <vignesh21@gmail.com>, Michael Paquier <michael@paquier.xyz>, Ibrar Ahmed <ibrar.ahmad@gmail.com>, Maciek Sakrejda <m.sakrejda@gmail.com>, pgsql-hackers <pgsql-hackers@postgresql.org>, David Geier <geidav.pg@gmail.com>
Date: 2026-03-03T17:09:08Z
Lists: pgsql-hackers 
Hi,

Just a quick comment, haven't actually had time to look through the email/new
patch version with any care.


On 2026-03-03 02:29:06 -0800, Lukas Fittl wrote:
> - Added support for HyperV hypervisor by reading the TSC frequency
> MSR. This allows Azure Linux VMs to work as well, and in my test gives
> a similar speed up with RDTSC like reported on AWS. Only annoyance is
> that to enable it you have to make /dev/cpu/0/msr readable ("setcap
> cap_sys_rawio=ep" on the binary that accesses it + give the user/group
> access to the device file)

I rather doubt that giving even just read access to MSRs to unprivileged
userspace processes is a good idea.

But if we read files anyway, wouldn't just using
  /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/base_frequency
work?

Greetings,

Andres Freund

Commits

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

  1. pg_test_timing: Show additional TSC clock source debug info

  2. instrumentation: Avoid CPUID 0x15/0x16 for Hypervisor TSC frequency

  3. pg_test_timing: Also test RDTSC[P] timing, report time source, TSC frequency

  4. Allow retrieving x86 TSC frequency/flags from CPUID

  5. instrumentation: Standardize ticks to nanosecond conversion method

  6. instrumentation: Use Time-Stamp Counter on x86-64 to lower overhead

  7. Check for __cpuidex and __get_cpuid_count separately

  8. pg_test_timing: Reduce per-loop overhead

  9. Refactor handling of x86 CPUID instructions

  10. instrumentation: Drop INSTR_TIME_SET_CURRENT_LAZY macro

  11. Rename pg_crc32c_sse42_choose.c for general purpose

  12. Zero initialize uses of instr_time about to trigger compiler warnings

  13. instr_time: Represent time as an int64 on all platforms

  14. Add 250c8ee07ed to git-blame-ignore-revs