Re: 8.4 open item: copy performance regression?

Heikki Linnakangas <heikki.linnakangas@enterprisedb.com> writes:
> I wonder if using the small ring showed any benefit when the COPY is not 
> WAL-logged? In that scenario block-on-WAL-flush behavior doesn't happen, 
> so the small ring might have some L2 cache benefits.

I think the notion that we might get a cache win from a smaller ring
is an illusion.  We're not expecting to go back and re-read from a
previously filled page in this scenario.  In any case, all of the
profiling results so far show that the CPU bottlenecks are elsewhere.
Until we can squeeze an order of magnitude out of COPY's data parsing
and/or XLogInsert, any possible cache effects will be down in the noise.

So to my mind, the only question left to answer (at least for the 8.4
cycle) is "is 16MB enough, or do we want to make the ring even bigger?".
Right at the moment I'd be satisfied with 16, but I wonder whether there
are scenarios where 32MB would show a significant advantage.
        regards, tom lane