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Andres Freund b64d92f1a5 Add a basic atomic ops API abstracting away platform/architecture details.
Several upcoming performance/scalability improvements require atomic
operations. This new API avoids the need to splatter compiler and
architecture dependent code over all the locations employing atomic
ops.

For several of the potential usages it'd be problematic to maintain
both, a atomics using implementation and one using spinlocks or
similar. In all likelihood one of the implementations would not get
tested regularly under concurrency. To avoid that scenario the new API
provides a automatic fallback of atomic operations to spinlocks. All
properties of atomic operations are maintained. This fallback -
obviously - isn't as fast as just using atomic ops, but it's not bad
either. For one of the future users the atomics ontop spinlocks
implementation was actually slightly faster than the old purely
spinlock using implementation. That's important because it reduces the
fear of regressing older platforms when improving the scalability for
new ones.

The API, loosely modeled after the C11 atomics support, currently
provides 'atomic flags' and 32 bit unsigned integers. If the platform
efficiently supports atomic 64 bit unsigned integers those are also
provided.

To implement atomics support for a platform/architecture/compiler for
a type of atomics 32bit compare and exchange needs to be
implemented. If available and more efficient native support for flags,
32 bit atomic addition, and corresponding 64 bit operations may also
be provided. Additional useful atomic operations are implemented
generically ontop of these.

The implementation for various versions of gcc, msvc and sun studio have
been tested. Additional existing stub implementations for
* Intel icc
* HUPX acc
* IBM xlc
are included but have never been tested. These will likely require
fixes based on buildfarm and user feedback.

As atomic operations also require barriers for some operations the
existing barrier support has been moved into the atomics code.

Author: Andres Freund with contributions from Oskari Saarenmaa
Reviewed-By: Amit Kapila, Robert Haas, Heikki Linnakangas and Álvaro Herrera
Discussion: CA+TgmoYBW+ux5-8Ja=Mcyuy8=VXAnVRHp3Kess6Pn3DMXAPAEA@mail.gmail.com,
    20131015123303.GH5300@awork2.anarazel.de,
    20131028205522.GI20248@awork2.anarazel.de
2014-09-25 23:49:05 +02:00
config Add a basic atomic ops API abstracting away platform/architecture details. 2014-09-25 23:49:05 +02:00
contrib Refactor space allocation for base64 encoding/decoding in pgcrypto. 2014-09-25 16:36:58 +03:00
doc Add -D option to specify data directory to pg_controldata and pg_resetxlog. 2014-09-25 13:37:19 +03:00
src Add a basic atomic ops API abstracting away platform/architecture details. 2014-09-25 23:49:05 +02:00
.dir-locals.el Update Emacs configuration 2013-08-13 20:08:44 -04:00
.gitattributes gitattributes: Ignore time zone data files for whitespace checks 2014-07-22 00:12:10 -04:00
.gitignore Add *.pot to .gitignore 2013-10-19 10:56:52 -04:00
aclocal.m4
configure Add a basic atomic ops API abstracting away platform/architecture details. 2014-09-25 23:49:05 +02:00
configure.in Add a basic atomic ops API abstracting away platform/architecture details. 2014-09-25 23:49:05 +02:00
COPYRIGHT Update copyright for 2014 2014-01-07 16:05:30 -05:00
GNUmakefile.in Add TAP tests for client programs 2014-04-14 21:33:46 -04:00
HISTORY Improve text of stub HISTORY file. 2014-02-12 18:16:17 -05:00
Makefile
README Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00
README.git Don't generate plain-text HISTORY and src/test/regress/README anymore. 2014-02-10 20:48:04 -05:00

PostgreSQL Database Management System
=====================================

This directory contains the source code distribution of the PostgreSQL
database management system.

PostgreSQL is an advanced object-relational database management system
that supports an extended subset of the SQL standard, including
transactions, foreign keys, subqueries, triggers, user-defined types
and functions.  This distribution also contains C language bindings.

PostgreSQL has many language interfaces, many of which are listed here:

	http://www.postgresql.org/download

See the file INSTALL for instructions on how to build and install
PostgreSQL.  That file also lists supported operating systems and
hardware platforms and contains information regarding any other
software packages that are required to build or run the PostgreSQL
system.  Copyright and license information can be found in the
file COPYRIGHT.  A comprehensive documentation set is included in this
distribution; it can be read as described in the installation
instructions.

The latest version of this software may be obtained at
http://www.postgresql.org/download/.  For more information look at our
web site located at http://www.postgresql.org/.