Re: Scaling up PostgreSQL in Multiple CPU / Dual Core

Christopher,

On 3/23/06 6:22 PM, "Christopher Browne" <cbbrowne(at)acm(dot)org> wrote:

> Question: Does the Bizgress/MPP use threading for this concurrency?
> Or forking?
>
> If it does so via forking, that's more portable, and less dependent on
> specific complexities of threading implementations (which amounts to
> non-portability ;-)).

OK - I'll byte:

It's process based, we fork backends at slice points in the execution plan.

To take care of the startup latency problem, we persist sets of these
backends, called "gangs". They appear, persist for connection scope for
reuse, then are disbanded.

> Most times Jan comes to town, we spend a few minutes musing about the
> "splitting queries across threads" problem, and dismiss it again; if
> there's the beginning of a "split across processes," that's decidedly
> neat :-).

:-)

- Luke