Working with Large Sets of Data
Visualforce custom controllers and controller extensions are subject to Apex governor limits. For more information about governor limits, see Execution Governors and Limits. Additionally, Visualforce iteration components, such as <apex:pageBlockTable> and <apex:repeat>, are limited to a maximum of 1,000 items in the collection they iterate over.
Sometimes your Visualforce pages may need to work with or display larger sets of data, but not need to make modifications to that data; for example, if you are providing custom reporting and analytics. Visualforce offers developers a “read-only mode”, which relaxes the limit on the number of rows which can be queried in one request, and increases the limit on the number of collection items which can be iterated over within the page.