>> Any theories on how many GB of RAM would be required to render that?
>> (Assuming you turn off the display preview - apparently some people
>> don't know you can do this...)
> 
> In theory, POV-Ray needs to store (width*2) pixels. libpng may need to store
> a bunch more rows at once while compressing.

libpng only needs the current and previous row to run the pixel filter. 
I have no idea what the DEFLATE compressor needs. (Other than a complete 
redesign...) All assuming you're not going to generate interlaced PNG, 
that is.

I note that to store (2^31 - 1) x (2^31 - 1) pixels, where each pixel 
requires exactly 4 bytes, requires about 18 exabytes of storage. (!!)

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(2^31+-+1)^2+*+4+bytes

Note: 1 exabyte = 1,000 petabytes = 1,000,000 terabytes (or thereabouts).

Nobody has anything approaching that amount of disk space, never mind RAM.

Also, if POV-Ray achieves a million pixels per second (highly unlikely), 
that gives us...

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=(2^31+-+1)^2+%2F+1000000+*+1+second

...almost 150 millennia. So it seems pretty moot to me. :-P

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