When a backend attempts to start a read IO and finds the first buffer already
has I/O in progress, previously it waited for that I/O to complete before
initiating reads for any of the subsequent buffers.
Although it must wait for the I/O to finish when acquiring the buffer, there's
no reason for it to wait when setting up the read operation. Waiting at this
point prevents starting I/O on subsequent buffers and can significantly reduce
concurrency.
This matters in two workloads:
1) When multiple backends scan the same relation concurrently.
2) When a single backend requests the same block multiple times within the
readahead distance.
Waiting each time an in-progress read is encountered effectively degenerates
the access pattern into synchronous I/O.
To fix this, when encountering an already in-progress IO for the head buffer,
the wait reference is now recorded and waiting is deferred until
WaitReadBuffers(), when the buffer actually needs to be acquired.
In rare cases, a backend may still need to wait synchronously at IO
start time: If another backend has set BM_IO_IN_PROGRESS on the buffer
but has not yet set the wait reference. Such windows should be brief and
uncommon.
Author: Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com>
Author: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> Reviewed-by: Andres Freund <andres@anarazel.de> Reviewed-by: Melanie Plageman <melanieplageman@gmail.com> Reviewed-by: Nazir Bilal Yavuz <byavuz81@gmail.com>
Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/flat/zljergweqti7x67lg5ije2rzjusie37nslsnkjkkby4laqqbfw%403p3zu522yykv