Re: Lockfree hashtables - Mailing list pgsql-hackers

From Jonah H. Harris
Subject Re: Lockfree hashtables
Date
Msg-id 36e682920812310528h1da15236l9d71d6e5db56f9db@mail.gmail.com
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In response to Lockfree hashtables  ("Stephen R. van den Berg" <srb@cuci.nl>)
List pgsql-hackers
On Wed, Dec 31, 2008 at 7:33 AM, Stephen R. van den Berg <srb@cuci.nl> wrote:
The other day I bumped into some ideas about lockfree hashtables.
Are these of any use in PostgreSQL?

Lock-free and wait-free algorithms have been used in various databases, but most people tend to shy away from them because of their complexity, difficulty to debug, and low-level portability issues.

I've used them in the past (lock-free hash tables and skip lists), and they're pretty awesome if used properly, but the majority of PG's current performance problems aren't generally found as part of our hash table implementation (which I'm quite fond of actually).  FWIS, I think we'll look more into this sometime in the future.

--
Jonah H. Harris, Senior DBA
myYearbook.com

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