> Now I've asked for the quickest path to detailed 
> understanding of the pg IO subsystem.  The goal being to get 
> more up to speed on its coding details.  Certainly not to 
> annoy you or anyone else.

Basically pg does random 8k (compile time blocksize) reads/writes only.
Bitmap and sequential scans read 8k blocks in order.
Only WAL does n x 8k writes with one system call.

pg relys on the OS readahead (== larger block IO) to do efficient IO.
Basically the pg scan performance should match a dd if=file of=/dev/null
bs=8k,
unless CPU bound.

Andreas

---------------------------(end of broadcast)---------------------------
TIP 9: In versions below 8.0, the planner will ignore your desire to
       choose an index scan if your joining column's datatypes do not
       match

Reply via email to