Re: Use generation context to speed up tuplesorts

On 2/23/22 03:25, Andres Freund wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On 2022-02-18 12:10:51 +1300, David Rowley wrote:
>> The other way I thought to fix it was by changing the logic for when
>> generation blocks are freed. In the problem case mentioned above, the
>> block being freed is the current block (which was just allocated). I
>> made some changes to adjust this behaviour so that we no longer free
>> the block when the final chunk is pfree()'d. Instead, that now lingers
>> and can be reused by future allocations, providing they fit inside it.
>
> That makes sense to me, as long as we keep just one such block.
>
>
>> The problem I see with this method is that there still could be some
>> pathological case that causes us to end up storing just a single tuple per
>> generation block.
>
> Crazy idea: Detect the situation, and recompact. Create a new context, copy
> all the tuples over, delete the old context. That could be a win even in less
> adversarial situations than "a single tuple per generation block".
>

What about pointers to the chunks in the old memory context?

regards

--
Tomas Vondra
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