9.2beta1, parallel queries, ReleasePredicateLocks, CheckForSerializableConflictIn in the oprofile

Hi,

I've been running some tests on pg 9.2beta1 and in particular a set
of queries like

create table _tmp0 as select * from (    select *, (select healpixid from idt_match as m where
m.transitid=o.transitid)               as x from idt_photoobservation as o offset 0          ) as y where x%16=ZZZ
orderby x;
 

(where ZZZ is some number integer number 0<=ZZZ<16)

With the following plan:
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sort (cost=3228814504.96..3228815137.21 rows=252902 width=498)   Sort Key: y.x   ->  Subquery Scan on y
(cost=0.00..3228791809.25rows=252902 width=498)         Filter: ((y.x % 16::bigint) = 0)         ->  Limit
(cost=0.00..3228033102.41rows=50580456 width=490)               ->  Seq Scan on idt_photoobservation o
(cost=0.00..3228033102.41rows=50580456 width=490)                     SubPlan 1                       ->  Index Scan
usingidt_match_transitid_idx on idt_match m  (cost=0.00..63.74 rows=1 width=8)                             Index Cond:
(transitid= o.transitid)
 

The schema of the tables are:

e2es2=> \d idt_match     Table "public.idt_match"  Column   |   Type   | Modifiers
-----------+----------+----------- sourceid  | bigint   | transitid | bigint   | healpixid | bigint   | flagsxm   |
smallint|
 
Indexes:    "idt_match_idx" btree (healpixid)    "idt_match_transitid_idx" btree (transitid)

Table "public.idt_photoobservation"  Column   |   Type   | Modifiers
-----------+----------+----------- transitid | bigint   | fluxbp0   | real     |
....
more columns
....
Indexes:    "idt_photoobservation_idx" btree (transitid)

And I noticed than when I run the query like the one shown above in parallel
(in multiple connections for ZZZ=0...8) the performance of each query 
drops down significantly (factor of 2)(despite the fact that during the 
execution of the query postgres is mostly CPU bound).

So I tried to oprofile it and strace it, And that's what I saw:

The strace -c of each process  shows something like that
#########
Process 18660 detached
% time     seconds  usecs/call     calls    errors syscall
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ---------------- 76.25    0.001342           0    268987
semop23.75    0.000418           0     61694           read  0.00    0.000000           0       138           lseek
0.00   0.000000           0       355           select  0.00    0.000000           0         3           kill
 
------ ----------- ----------- --------- --------- ----------------
100.00    0.001760                331177           total
#######

And the oprofile shows this on top:
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2863981  25.7117  ReleasePredicateLocks  2863981  100.000  ReleasePredicateLocks [self]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1246629  11.1917  LocalBufferAlloc  1246629  100.000  LocalBufferAlloc [self]
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1135393  10.1931  CheckForSerializableConflictIn  1135393  100.000  CheckForSerializableConflictIn [self]
------------------------------------------------------------

So there is a lot of locking for some reason, And I was surprised to see 
anything related to SSI in the profile at all, because I'm not running 
serializable transactions (I was just running my queries from multiple 
psql sessions).

Is there a reasonable explanation for what I'm seeing  ?

Thanks in advance,    Sergey

More info: there is no other concurrent activity on the machine.
shared_buffers is 10G, The machine has ~ 60G of RAM, 24 cores and proper 
RAID

Another note is that the oprofile and strace were obtained during the 
stage when the idt_photo.. table was scanned and data was being stored in 
the pgsql_tmp (not during the last bit when the data in pgsql_tmp were
actually being sorted).


*****************************************************
Sergey E. Koposov, PhD, Research Associate
Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Madingley road, CB3 0HA, Cambridge, UK