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1.8.7.5 Compiling for optimal performance

On the SPARC architecture, Sun Studio is strongly recommended for compilation. Try using the -xO5 optimization flag to generate significantly faster binaries. Do not use any flags that modify behavior of floating-point operations and errno processing (e.g., -fast). These flags could raise some nonstandard PostgreSQL behavior for example in the date/time computing.

If you do not have a reason to use 64-bit binaries on SPARC, prefer the 32-bit version. The 64-bit operations are slower and 64-bit binaries are slower than the 32-bit variants. And on other hand, 32-bit code on the AMD64 CPU family is not native, and that is why 32-bit code is significant slower on this CPU family.

Some tricks for tuning PostgreSQL and Solaris for performance can be found at http://www.sun.com/servers/coolthreads/tnb/applications_postgresql.jsp. This article is primary focused on T2000 platform, but many of the recommendations are also useful on other hardware with Solaris.