To be honest, it was a very paralell process. I could do a fraction of the compute, needing a fraction of the RAM, but taking a shit ton more time.

Also, theres no perfect machine for this use. I can have 3.5 times more RAM than needed, or start swapping and waste time.

Tell your friend to open source the algorithm… Somebody will surely point at a easy optimization. 100 others will just shit on your friend

*looking at the 14TB cluster I had running for 18 hours

Yep, nobody would ever need that much memory

Nah, pump the humidity. Free sauna!