Thrashing (computer Science)

Thrashing (computer Science)

In computer science, the term thrashing is a colloquialism normally used to describe a computer whose virtual memory subsystem is in a constant state of paging, rapidly exchanging data in memory for data on disk, to the exclusion of most application-level processing. This causes the performance of the computer to degrade or collapse. The situation may not resolve itself quickly, but can continue indefinitely until the underlying cause is addressed.