>If you are sneering at the memory requirement, note that this was back in 2010. Most Google servers were maxed at 32GB.
As I recall, Nehalem EP (launched 2008 or 2009?) could handle in excess of 100GB per socket? Not cheap necessarily, but definitely still counted as "commodity hardware" for that era. I say this recalling that even my mid-tier workstation from then could handle 48GB (in that wonky era of triple-channel RAM), though I only had it loaded with 12GB. Then again I could see, if said servers in 2010 were at the end of a purchasing cycle from 2007 or so, that they were "maxed" at 32GB?
Anyway, my from-memory nitpick doesn't detract from the article's ultimate point, though: distribution was an obvious need that would only become more pressing.