Using C for a specialized data store

Umm, we're talking about just over 18MB here (1200 * 1000 pixels, 16 bytes/pixel, see <a href="http://pixenomics.tumblr.com/post/16895861678/how-to-send-1-2-million-pixels" rel="nofollow">http://pixenomics.tumblr.com/post/16895861678/how-to-send-1-...</a>). That you can just dump over the wire as a binary blob. Why are we talking about this again? Use your favourite language, just keep it in a big blob in memory, and have fun.

Seems to me they skipped right over the most obvious option: Redis.<p>It's quite fast, you can use a Redis string as a random-access array up to 512MB/each, and there are several good ways to handle persistence/backup. I don't think there was a need for them to write any C themselves.