Show Notes
An aws engineer discovered a 50% regression in postgres throughput while testing the new Linux 7.0 kernel. The cause turns out to be massive TLB and page faults exacerbated by Postgres process-based design. In this backend engineering show episode I dive deep into how this was discovered, the root cause and the possible fixes and workarounds. Intermediate and Advanced Backend Engineering Course Bundlehttps://courses.husseinnasser.com/bundleMy Book, Root Cause: Stories and Lessons from Two Decades of Backend Engineering Bugs https://amzn.to/4cKfZhe 0:00 Intro2:30 The Discovery6:30 Spinlocks9:25 Preemption 13:00 Root Cause17:00 How Postgres Processes exacerbated the problem 22:30 Is the fix easy?25:50 Summary
More from The Backend Engineering Show with Hussein Nasser
I discuss the state of what will be happening in the coming few years and why I encourage the 3 of you who want to be elite engineers to keep their critical thinking sharp. To pause and think before prompting.
This is a conversation with Rashed Hasan, a PhD Candidate from the University of Nebraska. We chatted about databases, ORMs and how to use AI without losing yourself. Rashed pagehttps://www.mdrashedulhasan.me/homepage
I discuss loops engineering and how it will numb creative thinking and critical system design for engineers.
I like SQL but the standard should have included ways to hint instead of the abstraction of "let me do it for you"
In this episode I explore why you should take some time to examine the operation you are caching before doing so. And why caching is a cop-out