Tom,
Hmm ... I wonder whether this means that the current work on parallelizing I/O (the posix_fadvise patch in particular) is a dead end. Because what that is basically going to do is expend more CPU to improve I/O efficiency. If you believe this thesis then that's not the road we want to go down.
Nope. People who adminster small databases keep forgetting that there is another class of users with multiple terabytes of data. Those users aren't getting away from spinning disk anytime in the next 5 years.
Additionally, but making PostgreSQL work better with OS-based FS optimization, we are well positioned to take advantage of any special features which Linux, Solaris, BSD etc. add to utilize new hardware like SSDs. posix_fadvise is a great example of this.
--Josh -- Sent via pgsql-performance mailing list (pgsql-performance@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx) To make changes to your subscription: http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-performance