to_hipscat is significantly slower than to_parquet

[hombit]

Bug report

Catalog.to_hipscat() is much slower than Catalog._ddf.to_parquet() for large jobs.

For example, for a smaller job, to_hipscat() took 100s, while to_parquet() took only 50s. For a larger job to_hipscat took 63 minutes, while to_parquet() took only 12 minutes. These are on Bridges2, 128 cores / 256 GB, 16 Dask workers.

For the larger job for the most of the time I see no activity with Dask Dashboard, and 100% of a single CPU core usage with top. This probably means that some planning job is talking all the time, not actual computations and I/O.

Code I run

```python from pathlib import Path import dask.distributed import lsdb HIPSCAT_PATH = Path('/ocean/projects/phy210048p/shared/hipscat/catalogs/') PS1_BANDS = 'riz' # Smaller version adds .cone_search(0, 45, 25*3600) to each catalog ztf_dr17_coord = lsdb.read_hipscat( 'hipscat/ztf_dr17_coord', margin_cache='hipscat/ztf_dr17_coord_2arcsec', ).query('filter == 2') # r-band only gaia = lsdb.read_hipscat( HIPSCAT_PATH / 'gaia_dr3' / 'gaia', margin_cache=str(HIPSCAT_PATH / 'gaia_dr3' / 'gaia_10arcs'), columns=[ 'ra', 'dec', # 'parallax', 'parallax_over_error', 'teff_gspphot', 'teff_gspphot_lower', 'teff_gspphot_upper', 'logg_gspphot', 'logg_gspphot_lower', 'logg_gspphot_upper', # 'ag_gspphot', 'ag_gspphot_lower', 'ag_gspphot_upper', ], ).query( "parallax_over_error > 10.0" " and teff_gspphot_upper < 3800" " and (teff_gspphot_upper - teff_gspphot_lower) < 400" " and logg_gspphot_lower > 4.5" " and (logg_gspphot_upper - logg_gspphot_lower) < 0.2" ) panstarrs = lsdb.read_hipscat( HIPSCAT_PATH / 'ps1' / 'ps1_otmo', margin_cache=str(HIPSCAT_PATH / 'ps1' / 'ps1_otmo_10arcs'), columns= ['raMean', 'decMean'] + [f'{b}MeanPSFMag' for b in PS1_BANDS] + [f'{b}MeanPSFMagErr' for b in PS1_BANDS], ).query( "((rMeanPSFMag - iMeanPSFMag) + (rMeanPSFMagErr + iMeanPSFMagErr)) > 0.42" " and ((iMeanPSFMag - zMeanPSFMag) + (iMeanPSFMagErr + zMeanPSFMagErr)) > 0.23" " and rMeanPSFMagErr < 0.1 and iMeanPSFMagErr < 0.1 and zMeanPSFMagErr < 0.1" ) catalog = ztf_dr17_coord.crossmatch( gaia, radius_arcsec=1, n_neighbors=1, suffixes=['', '_gaia'], ).crossmatch( panstarrs, radius_arcsec=1, n_neighbors=1, suffixes=['', ''], ) with dask.distributed.Client(n_workers=16): catalog.to_hipscat(base_catalog_path=f'hipscat/catalog_name', catalog_name='catalog_name') with dask.distributed.Client(n_workers=16): catalog._ddf.to_parquet('delete-me') ```

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• [x] I have described the situation in which the bug arose, including what code was executed, information about my environment, and any applicable data others will need to reproduce the problem.
• [x] I have included available evidence of the unexpected behavior (including error messages, screenshots, and/or plots) as well as a descriprion of what I expected instead.
• [ ] If I have a solution in mind, I have provided an explanation and/or pseudocode and/or task list.

[hombit]

It changes in the current release (0.2.6), now the code runs .to_hipscat() in 59 minutes and to_parquet() in 32 minutes.