A similar approach was used in this tool, whose writeup I found quite interesting: https://devblog.dnanexus.com/faster-bam-sorting-with-samtools-and-rocksdb/ ht

A similar approach was used in this tool, whose writeup I found quite interesting: https://devblog.dnanexus.com/faster-bam-sorting-with-samtools-and-rocksdb/ https://devblog.dnanexus.com/faster-bam-sorting-with-samtool... Background: "samtools," a tool meant for processing multi-gigabyte genomic alignment data, uses a sort algorithm basically the same as `sort`. This fork instead jams the data into Facebook's RocksDB, and then extracts it back out. Speedup ranged from 1.2x to 5x, with bigger input files and slower disks seeing the most gains.