Increase the default value of effective_cache_size to 4GB.

Per discussion, the old value of 128MB is ridiculously small on modern
machines; in fact, it's not even any larger than the default value of
shared_buffers, which it certainly should be.  Increase to 4GB, which
is unlikely to be any worse than the old default for anyone, and should
be noticeably better for most.  Eventually we might have an autotuning
scheme for this setting, but the recent attempt crashed and burned,
so for now just do this.

4 files changed, 13 insertions, 13 deletions

diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml
index bc5a8870444..d9e5985a16a 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/config.sgml
@@ -3194,8 +3194,8 @@ include 'filename'
         memory allocated by <productname>PostgreSQL</productname>, nor
         does it reserve kernel disk cache; it is used only for estimation
         purposes.  The system also does not assume data remains in
-        the disk cache between queries.  The default is 128 megabytes
-        (<literal>128MB</>).
+        the disk cache between queries.  The default is 4 gigabytes
+        (<literal>4GB</>).
        </para>
       </listitem>
      </varlistentry>
diff --git a/doc/src/sgml/release-9.4.sgml b/doc/src/sgml/release-9.4.sgml
index 4e4f017e43c..21c6fc77f79 100644
--- a/doc/src/sgml/release-9.4.sgml
+++ b/doc/src/sgml/release-9.4.sgml
@@ -722,18 +722,10 @@
 
       <listitem>
        <para>
-        Auto-tune <link
-        linkend="guc-effective-cache-size"><varname>effective_cache_size</></link>
-        to be four-times shared buffers (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)
-       </para>
-      </listitem>
-
-      <listitem>
-       <para>
         Increase <link
         linkend="guc-work-mem"><varname>work_mem</></link> and <link
         linkend="guc-maintenance-work-mem"><varname>maintenance_work_mem</></link>
-        defaults by four-times (Bruce Momjian)
+        defaults by four times (Bruce Momjian)
        </para>
 
        <para>
@@ -743,6 +735,14 @@
 
       <listitem>
        <para>
+        Increase the default setting of <link
+        linkend="guc-effective-cache-size"><varname>effective_cache_size</></link>
+        to 4GB (Bruce Momjian, Tom Lane)
+       </para>
+      </listitem>
+
+      <listitem>
+       <para>
         Allow terabyte units to be specified for configuration variable
         values (Simon Riggs)
        </para>
diff --git a/src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample b/src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample
index 61685f7c13f..6dc0698efeb 100644
--- a/src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample
+++ b/src/backend/utils/misc/postgresql.conf.sample
@@ -283,7 +283,7 @@
 #cpu_tuple_cost = 0.01			# same scale as above
 #cpu_index_tuple_cost = 0.005		# same scale as above
 #cpu_operator_cost = 0.0025		# same scale as above
-#effective_cache_size = 128MB
+#effective_cache_size = 4GB
 
 # - Genetic Query Optimizer -
 
diff --git a/src/include/optimizer/cost.h b/src/include/optimizer/cost.h
index 3c3c63ae100..75e2afb1e2c 100644
--- a/src/include/optimizer/cost.h
+++ b/src/include/optimizer/cost.h
@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
 #define DEFAULT_CPU_INDEX_TUPLE_COST 0.005
 #define DEFAULT_CPU_OPERATOR_COST  0.0025
 
-#define DEFAULT_EFFECTIVE_CACHE_SIZE  16384		/* measured in pages */
+#define DEFAULT_EFFECTIVE_CACHE_SIZE  524288	/* measured in pages */
 
 typedef enum
 {