Subject: [PATCH] Using mimalloc to improve performance and reduce memory allocation lock contention

From: Adrian Grucza <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2024 16:41:40 +1100

Hi,

We have a multi-threaded Windows application that was experiencing delays
due to high lock contention in memory allocations from the PostgreSQL ODBC
driver. We tried modifying the driver to use mimalloc
<https://github.com/microsoft/mimalloc>, which is a memory allocator with
better performance characteristics. After deploying this change, the delays
due to lock contention disappeared. It has been running on thousands of our
production deployments for 9 months without issue.

I've created this pull request
<https://github.com/postgresql-interfaces/psqlodbc/pull/6> so that others
can benefit from this change by building the driver with the _MIMALLOC_
symbol defined and linking to the mimalloc library.

In my patch, the usage of mimalloc is off by default, so it should be safe
to merge. But I'd like to get people's thoughts on whether it should be
enabled by default so that people can benefit from this change without
having to build the driver themselves.

Regards,
Adrian

Adrian Grucza  
Technical Lead
Office: +61390185800
[email-masked]
www.iress.com
Level 16 385 Bourke St
 Melbourne, Victoria, 3000
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From: Dave Cramer <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 25 Mar 2024 06:59:25 -0400

> having to build the driver themselves.

Cool,

Thanks, I will have a look

Dave