Improve the generation memory allocator

Here we make a series of improvements to the generation memory
allocator, namely:

1. Allow generation contexts to have a minimum, initial and maximum block
sizes. The standard allocator allows this already but when the generation
context was added, it only allowed fixed-sized blocks.  The problem with
fixed-sized blocks is that it's difficult to choose how large to make the
blocks.  If the chosen size is too small then we'd end up with a large
number of blocks and a large number of malloc calls. If the block size is
made too large, then memory is wasted.

2. Add support for "keeper" blocks.  This is a special block that is
allocated along with the context itself but is never freed.  Instead,
when the last chunk in the keeper block is freed, we simply mark the block
as empty to allow new allocations to make use of it.

3. Add facility to "recycle" newly empty blocks instead of freeing them
and having to later malloc an entire new block again.  We do this by
recording a single GenerationBlock which has become empty of any chunks.
When we run out of space in the current block, we check to see if there is
a "freeblock" and use that if it contains enough space for the allocation.

Author: David Rowley, Tomas Vondra
Reviewed-by: Andy Fan
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/d987fd54-01f8-0f73-af6c-519f799a0ab8@enterprisedb.com

1 files changed, 6 insertions, 0 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/gist/gistvacuum.c b/src/backend/access/gist/gistvacuum.c
index aac4afab8ff..f190decdff2 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/gist/gistvacuum.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/gist/gistvacuum.c
@@ -158,9 +158,15 @@ gistvacuumscan(IndexVacuumInfo *info, IndexBulkDeleteResult *stats,
 	 * pages in page_set_context.  Internally, the integer set will remember
 	 * this context so that the subsequent allocations for these integer sets
 	 * will be done from the same context.
+	 *
+	 * XXX the allocation sizes used below pre-date generation context's block
+	 * growing code.  These values should likely be benchmarked and set to
+	 * more suitable values.
 	 */
 	vstate.page_set_context = GenerationContextCreate(CurrentMemoryContext,
 													  "GiST VACUUM page set context",
+													  16 * 1024,
+													  16 * 1024,
 													  16 * 1024);
 	oldctx = MemoryContextSwitchTo(vstate.page_set_context);
 	vstate.internal_page_set = intset_create();