Re: Issue with the PRNG used by Postgres

Actually ... Parag mentioned that this was specifically about
lwlock.c's usage of spinlocks. It doesn't really use a spinlock,
but it does use s_lock.c's delay logic, and I think it's got the
usage pattern wrong:

while (true)
{
/* always try once to acquire lock directly */
old_state = pg_atomic_fetch_or_u32(&lock->state, LW_FLAG_LOCKED);
if (!(old_state & LW_FLAG_LOCKED))
break; /* got lock */

/* and then spin without atomic operations until lock is released */
{
SpinDelayStatus delayStatus;

init_local_spin_delay(&delayStatus);

while (old_state & LW_FLAG_LOCKED)
{
perform_spin_delay(&delayStatus);
old_state = pg_atomic_read_u32(&lock->state);
}
#ifdef LWLOCK_STATS
delays += delayStatus.delays;
#endif
finish_spin_delay(&delayStatus);
}

/*
* Retry. The lock might obviously already be re-acquired by the time
* we're attempting to get it again.
*/
}

I don't think it's correct to re-initialize the SpinDelayStatus each
time around the outer loop. That state should persist through the
entire acquire operation, as it does in a regular spinlock acquire.
As this stands, it resets the delay to minimum each time around the
outer loop, and I bet it is that behavior not the RNG that's to blame
for what he's seeing.

(One should still wonder what is the LWLock usage pattern that is
causing this spot to become so heavily contended.)

regards, tom lane