"Curtis Faith" <curtis(at)galtair(dot)com> writes:
> Do you not think this is a potential performance problem to be explored?
I agree that there's a problem if the kernel runs short of buffer space.
I am not sure whether that's really an issue in practical situations,
nor whether we can do much about it at the application level if it is
--- but by all means look for solutions if you are concerned.
(This is, BTW, one of the reasons for discouraging people from pushing
Postgres' shared buffer cache up to a large fraction of total RAM;
starving the kernel of disk buffers is just plain not a good idea.)
regards, tom lane