Hi hackers,

I wonder why while calculating cost of parallel scan we divide by parallel_divisor only CPU run cost, but not storage access cost? So we do not take in account that reading pages is also performed in parallel. Actually I observed strange behavior when increasing work_mem disables parallel plan even with parallel-friendly tuning:

set parallel_tuple_cost = 0;
set parallel_setup_cost = 0;
set max_parallel_workers = 16;
set max_parallel_workers_per_gather = 16;
set min_parallel_table_scan_size = '16kB';

postgres=# set work_mem = '32MB';
SET
postgres=# explain select sum(payload) from sp where p <@ 
'((0.2,0.2),(0.3,0.3))'::box;
                                            QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Finalize Aggregate  (cost=3427210.71..3427210.72 rows=1 width=8)
   ->  Gather  (cost=3427210.67..3427210.68 rows=12 width=8)
         Workers Planned: 12
         ->  Partial Aggregate  (cost=3427210.67..3427210.68 rows=1 width=8)
               ->  Parallel Bitmap Heap Scan on sp  (cost=31994.55..3427002.34 
rows=83333 width=4)
                     Recheck Cond: (p <@ '(0.3,0.3),(0.2,0.2)'::box)
                     ->  Bitmap Index Scan on sp_p_idx  (cost=0.00..31744.55 
rows=1000000 width=0)
                           Index Cond: (p <@ '(0.3,0.3),(0.2,0.2)'::box)
(8 rows)

postgres=# set work_mem = '64MB';
SET
postgres=# explain select sum(payload) from sp where p <@ 
'((0.2,0.2),(0.3,0.3))'::box;
                                      QUERY PLAN
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 Aggregate  (cost=2694543.52..2694543.53 rows=1 width=8)
   ->  Bitmap Heap Scan on sp  (cost=31994.55..2692043.52 rows=1000000 width=4)
         Recheck Cond: (p <@ '(0.3,0.3),(0.2,0.2)'::box)
         ->  Bitmap Index Scan on sp_p_idx  (cost=0.00..31744.55 rows=1000000 
width=0)
               Index Cond: (p <@ '(0.3,0.3),(0.2,0.2)'::box)
(5 rows)


In theory, with zero parallel setup cost we should always prefer parallel plan with maximal possible number of workers.
But right now it is not true.

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