Re: PostgreSQL pre-fork speedup

Forking is expensive on many systems. Linux is a bit
better but still expensive compared to threads. On
Windows, creating process is much more expensive than
on Linux. Check this benchmark:

http://cs.nmu.edu/~randy/Research/Papers/Scheduler/understanding.html

Forking shouldn't be taken lightly as free thing.
There are pros and cons. The general trend is going
towards threads, but that's a different issue.

--- "scott.marlowe" <scott(dot)marlowe(at)ihs(dot)com> wrote:
> On Wed, 5 May 2004, sdv mailer wrote:
>
> > Forking is quite fast on Linux but creating a new
> > process is still 10x more expensive than creating
> a
> > thread and is even worse on Win32 platform. CPU
> load
> > goes up because the OS needs to
> allocate/deallocate
> > memory making it difficult to get a steady state
> > resource consumption.
>
> Just a nit to pick here. In Linux, the difference
> between forking and
> spawning a new thread is almost nothing. Definitely
> less than a factor of
> 2, and most assuredly less than the quoted factor of
> 10 here.
>
> The fact that windows has a heavy process /
> lightweight thread design
> means little to me, since I'll likely never deploy a
> production postgresql
> server on it that needs to handle any serious load.
>

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