Major Description
I think our current defaults (maxThreadCount=#cores/2,
maxMergeCount=maxThreadCount+2) are too high ... I've frequently found
merges falling behind and then slowing each other down when I index on
a spinning-magnets drive.
As a test, I indexed all of English Wikipedia with term-vectors (=
heavy on merging), using 6 threads ... at the defaults
(maxThreadCount=3, maxMergeCount=5, for my machine) it took 5288 sec
to index & wait for merges & commit. When I changed to
maxThreadCount=1, maxMergeCount=2, indexing time sped up to 2902
seconds (45% faster). This is on a spinning-magnets disk... basically
spinning-magnets disk don't handle the concurrent IO well.
Then I tested an OCZ Vertex 3 SSD: at the current defaults it took
1494 seconds and at maxThreadCount=1, maxMergeCount=2 it took 1795 sec
(20% slower). Net/net the SSD can handle merge concurrency just fine.
I think we should change the defaults: spinning magnet drives are hurt
by the current defaults more than SSDs are helped ... apps that know
their IO system is fast can always increase the merge concurrency.