snapshot scalability: Introduce dense array of in-progress xids.

The new array contains the xids for all connected backends / in-use
PGPROC entries in a dense manner (in contrast to the PGPROC/PGXACT
arrays which can have unused entries interspersed).

This improves performance because GetSnapshotData() always needs to
scan the xids of all live procarray entries and now there's no need to
go through the procArray->pgprocnos indirection anymore.

As the set of running top-level xids changes rarely, compared to the
number of snapshots taken, this substantially increases the likelihood
of most data required for a snapshot being in l2 cache.  In
read-mostly workloads scanning the xids[] array will sufficient to
build a snapshot, as most backends will not have an xid assigned.

To keep the xid array dense ProcArrayRemove() needs to move entries
behind the to-be-removed proc's one further up in the array. Obviously
moving array entries cannot happen while a backend sets it
xid. I.e. locking needs to prevent that array entries are moved while
a backend modifies its xid.

To avoid locking ProcArrayLock in GetNewTransactionId() - a fairly hot
spot already - ProcArrayAdd() / ProcArrayRemove() now needs to hold
XidGenLock in addition to ProcArrayLock. Adding / Removing a procarray
entry is not a very frequent operation, even taking 2PC into account.

Due to the above, the dense array entries can only be read or modified
while holding ProcArrayLock and/or XidGenLock. This prevents a
concurrent ProcArrayRemove() from shifting the dense array while it is
accessed concurrently.

While the new dense array is very good when needing to look at all
xids it is less suitable when accessing a single backend's xid. In
particular it would be problematic to have to acquire a lock to access
a backend's own xid. Therefore a backend's xid is not just stored in
the dense array, but also in PGPROC. This also allows a backend to
only access the shared xid value when the backend had acquired an
xid.

The infrastructure added in this commit will be used for the remaining
PGXACT fields in subsequent commits. They are kept separate to make
review easier.

Author: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de>
Reviewed-By: Robert Haas <robertmhaas@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: Thomas Munro <thomas.munro@gmail.com>
Reviewed-By: David Rowley <dgrowleyml@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20200301083601.ews6hz5dduc3w2se@alap3.anarazel.de

1 files changed, 4 insertions, 4 deletions

diff --git a/src/backend/access/transam/clog.c b/src/backend/access/transam/clog.c
index dd2f4d5bc7e..a4599e96610 100644
--- a/src/backend/access/transam/clog.c
+++ b/src/backend/access/transam/clog.c
@@ -285,15 +285,15 @@ TransactionIdSetPageStatus(TransactionId xid, int nsubxids,
 	 * updates for multiple backends so that the number of times XactSLRULock
 	 * needs to be acquired is reduced.
 	 *
-	 * For this optimization to be safe, the XID in MyPgXact and the subxids
-	 * in MyProc must be the same as the ones for which we're setting the
-	 * status.  Check that this is the case.
+	 * For this optimization to be safe, the XID and subxids in MyProc must be
+	 * the same as the ones for which we're setting the status.  Check that
+	 * this is the case.
 	 *
 	 * For this optimization to be efficient, we shouldn't have too many
 	 * sub-XIDs and all of the XIDs for which we're adjusting clog should be
 	 * on the same page.  Check those conditions, too.
 	 */
-	if (all_xact_same_page && xid == MyPgXact->xid &&
+	if (all_xact_same_page && xid == MyProc->xid &&
 		nsubxids <= THRESHOLD_SUBTRANS_CLOG_OPT &&
 		nsubxids == MyPgXact->nxids &&
 		memcmp(subxids, MyProc->subxids.xids,