Producers perform disk I/O to read the input table, and consumers perform disk I/O to read and write intermediate sort results to and from disk. During the sort, producers pass data to consumers using the sort buffers. This avoids disk I/O by copying data rows completely in memory. The reserved buffers are not available to any other tasks for the duration of the sort.
The number of sort buffers configuration parameter determines the maximum space that can be used to perform a serial sort. Each sort instance can use up to the number of sort buffers value for each sort. If active sorts have reserved all of the buffers in a cache, and another sort needs sort buffers, that sort waits until buffers are available in the cache.
