Message-ID: <4DD2441D.8040500@postnewspapers.com.au>
Date: Tue, 17 May 2011 17:47:09 +0800
From: Craig Ringer <craig@postnewspapers.com.au>
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CC: pgsql-performance@postgresql.org
Subject: Re: [PERFORMANCE] expanding to SAN: which portion best
 to move
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On 05/17/2011 03:00 PM, Robert Klemme wrote:

> The main point is that you do not benefit from the larger IO bandwidth
> if access patterns do not permit parallel access to both disks (e.g.
> because you first need to read index blocks in order to know the table
> blocks to read).

This makes me wonder if Pg attempts to pre-fetch blocks of interest for 
areas where I/O needs can be known in advance, while there's still other 
works or other I/O to do. For example, pre-fetching for the next 
iteration of a nested loop while still executing the prior one. Is it 
even possible?

I'm guessing not, because (AFAIK) Pg uses only synchronous blocking I/O, 
and with that there isn't really a way to pre-fetch w/o threads or 
helper processes. Linux (at least) supports buffered async I/O, so it'd 
be possible to submit such prefetch requests ... on modern Linux 
kernels. Portably doing so, though - not so much.

--
Craig Ringer