Re: Streaming read-ready sequential scan code

Hello Thomas,

18.05.2024 07:47, Thomas Munro wrote:
> After more debugging, we learned a lot more things...
>
> 1.  That query produces spectacularly bad estimates, so we finish up
> having to increase the number of buckets in a parallel hash join many
> times.  That is quite interesting, but unrelated to new code.
> 2.  Parallel hash join is quite slow at negotiating an increase in the
> number of hash bucket, if all of the input tuples are being filtered
> out by quals, because of the choice of where workers check for
> PHJ_GROWTH_NEED_MORE_BUCKETS.  That could be improved quite easily I
> think.  I have put that on my todo list 'cause that's also my code,
> but it's not a new issue it's just one that is now highlighted...
> 3.  This bit of read_stream.c is exacerbating unfairness in the
> underlying scan, so that 1 and 2 come together and produce a nasty
> slowdown, which goes away if you change it like so:
>
> -       BlockNumber blocknums[16];
> +       BlockNumber blocknums[1];
>
> I will follow up after some more study.

Thank you for the information!

Unfortunately, I can't see significant differences in my environment with
parallel_leader_participation=off.

With blocknums[1], timing is changed, but the effect is not persistent.
10 query15 executions in a row, b7b0f3f27:
277.932 ms
281.805 ms
278.335 ms
281.565 ms
284.167 ms
283.171 ms
281.165 ms
281.615 ms
285.394 ms
277.301 ms

b7b0f3f27~1:
159.789 ms
165.407 ms
160.893 ms
159.343 ms
160.936 ms
161.577 ms
161.637 ms
163.421 ms
163.143 ms
167.109 ms

b7b0f3f27 + blocknums[1]:
164.133 ms
280.920 ms
160.748 ms
163.182 ms
161.709 ms
161.998 ms
161.239 ms
276.256 ms
161.601 ms
160.384 ms

I placed PGDATA on tmpfs to rule out any blockdev specifics (increasing
blockdev ra from 256 to 4096 didn't help me with PGDATA on NVME either.)

Best regards,
Alexander