Memory mapped files that are backed up by the System page file

Question

I am having a piece of software that is using MMF that is backed up by the system page file. The application uses MMF in order to cache large images. Write and read operations are happening at a very high frequency.

Though I can clearly see the performance boost of using MMF , I am still wondering what is a better approach , to map the MMF to a regular file , or to map to the system page file.

I am wondering whether anyone here can provide some insights about this , what would be better map it to the system page file or just to another file?

Note : my question is NOT about MMF in general , I am not wondering whether to use MMF or not , I am just wondering to where the MMF should be mapped.

Any insights about that?

Answer 1

The underlying mechanism and performance is the same, the main difference is that you are sharing the page file with all other processes in the system, so if you have a large amount of data you may run up against the size limit of the page file.