Can brute force algorithms scale?

Question

I have a math problem that I solve by trial and error (I think this is called brute force), and the program works fine when there are a few options, but as I add more variab

Answer 1

By definition, brute force algorithms are stupid. You'd be much better off with a more clever algorithm (if you have one). A better algorithm will reduce the work that has do be done, hopefully to a degree that you can do it without needing to "scale out" to multiple machines.

Regardless of algorithm, there comes a point when the amount of data or computation power required is so big that you will need use something like Hadoop. But usually, we are really talking Big Data here. You can already do a lot with a single PC these days.