Forking is expensive on many systems. Linux is a bit better but still expensive compared to threads. On Windows, creating process is much more expensive than on Linux. Check this benchmark:
http://cs.nmu.edu/~randy/Research/Papers/Scheduler/understanding.html Forking shouldn't be taken lightly as free thing. There are pros and cons. The general trend is going towards threads, but that's a different issue. --- "scott.marlowe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wed, 5 May 2004, sdv mailer wrote: > > > Forking is quite fast on Linux but creating a new > > process is still 10x more expensive than creating > a > > thread and is even worse on Win32 platform. CPU > load > > goes up because the OS needs to > allocate/deallocate > > memory making it difficult to get a steady state > > resource consumption. > > Just a nit to pick here. In Linux, the difference > between forking and > spawning a new thread is almost nothing. Definitely > less than a factor of > 2, and most assuredly less than the quoted factor of > 10 here. > > The fact that windows has a heavy process / > lightweight thread design > means little to me, since I'll likely never deploy a > production postgresql > server on it that needs to handle any serious load. > __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Win a $20,000 Career Makeover at Yahoo! HotJobs http://hotjobs.sweepstakes.yahoo.com/careermakeover ---------------------------(end of broadcast)--------------------------- TIP 9: the planner will ignore your desire to choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not match
