Thrashing is a situation when the performance of a computer degrades or collapses. Thrashing occurs when a system spends more time processing page faults than executing transactions. While processing page faults is necessary in order to appreciate the benefits of virtual memory, thrashing has a negative effect on the system. As the page fault rate increases, more transactions need processing from the paging device. The queue at the paging device increases, resulting in increased service time for a page fault.
