I found the kind of strange behaviour of the autovacuum launcher process when XID anti-wraparound vacuum.
Suppose that a database (say test_db) whose age of frozenxid is about to reach max_autovacuum_max_age has three tables T1 and T2. T1 is very large and is frequently updated, so vacuum takes long time for vacuum. T2 is static and already frozen table, thus vacuum can skip to vacuum whole table. And anti-wraparound vacuum was already executed on other databases.
Once the age of datfrozenxid of test_db exceeded max_autovacuum_max_age, autovacuum launcher launches worker process in order to do anti-wraparound vacuum on testdb. A worker process assigned to test_db begins to vacuum T1, it takes long time. Meanwhile another worker process is assigned to test_db and completes to vacuum on T2 and exits.
After for while, the autovacuum launcher launches new worker again and worker is assigned to test_db again. But that worker exits quickly because there is no table we need to vacuum. (T1 is being vacuumed by another worker process). When new worker process starts, worker process sends SIGUSR2 signal to launcher process to wake up him. Although the launcher process executes WaitLatch() after launched new worker, it is woken up and launches another new worker process soon again.
As a result, launcher process launches new worker process at extremely high frequency regardless of autovacuum_naptime, which increase cpu use rate.
Why does auto vacuum worker need to wake up launcher process after started?
autovacuum.c:L1604 /* wake up the launcher */ if (AutoVacuumShmem->av_launcherpid != 0) kill(AutoVacuumShmem->av_launcherpid, SIGUSR2);
I think that that is so that the launcher can launch multiple workers in quick succession if it has fallen behind schedule. It can't launch them in a tight loop, because its signals to the postmaster would get merged into one signal, so it has to wait for one to get mostly set-up before launching the next.
But it doesn't make any real difference to your scenario, as the short-lived worker will wake the launcher up a few microseconds later anyway, when it realizes it has no work to do and so exits.
