Re: Spinlock performance improvement proposal

> Bruce Momjian wrote:
> >
> > > Save for the fact that the kernel can switch between threads faster then
> > > it can switch processes considering threads share the same address space,
> > > stack, code, etc. If need be sharing the data between threads is much
> > > easier then sharing between processes.
> >
> > Just a clarification but because we fork each backend, don't they share
> > the same code space? Data/stack is still separate.
>
> In Linux and many modern UNIX programs, you share everything at fork time. The
> data and stack pages are marked "copy on write" which means that if you touch
> it, the processor traps and drops into the memory manager code. A new page is
> created and replaced into your address space where the page, to which you were
> going to write, was.

Yes, very true. My point was that backends already share code space and
non-modified data space. It is just modified data and stack that is
non-shared, but then again, they would have to be non-shared in a
threaded backend too.

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