A system to manage memory comprising: a computer system, including at least one processor and an operating system to control operation of said computer system, to dynamically configure and emulate a hardware architecture of a processing system that processes one or more nodes to determine a solution for a problem, wherein at least one of said nodes includes data for said problem and said computer system further includes: a virtual machine unit to emulate said hardware architecture and manage said nodes within a solution space, wherein said hardware architecture is designed to process said nodes; a virtual operating system to configure said virtual machine unit and to control operation of said virtual machine unit to emulate said hardware architecture based on parameters, wherein said virtual machine unit includes a plurality of node modules to manage the one or more nodes and a node index memory including a plurality of memory segments storing one or more index words each indicating a configuration for an associated node; characterized in that said virtual machine unit further includes: an index memory module to dynamically reconfigure an architecture of the node index memory, wherein each memory segment of the node index memory implements a dynamically specifiable memory architecture and at least two different memory segments enable different memory architectures, and wherein the memory architectures include an architecture storing index words of variable length in a non-sequential order of node identifiers within a segment, whereby the node index memory includes a table mapping each node identifier to an address of a corresponding index word in a segment for accessing the index words stored in the non-sequential order of node identifiers. a virtual machine unit to emulate said hardware architecture and manage said nodes within a solution space, wherein said hardware architecture is designed to process said nodes; a virtual operating system to configure said virtual machine unit and to control operation of said virtual machine unit to emulate said hardware architecture based on parameters, wherein said virtual machine unit includes a plurality of node modules to manage the one or more nodes and a node index memory including a plurality of memory segments storing one or more index words each indicating a configuration for an associated node; characterized in that said virtual machine unit further includes: an index memory module to dynamically reconfigure an architecture of the node index memory, wherein each memory segment of the node index memory implements a dynamically specifiable memory architecture and at least two different memory segments enable different memory architectures, and wherein the memory architectures include an architecture storing index words of variable length in a non-sequential order of node identifiers within a segment, whereby the node index memory includes a table mapping each node identifier to an address of a corresponding index word in a segment for accessing the index words stored in the non-sequential order of node identifiers. a plurality of node modules to manage the one or more nodes and a node index memory including a plurality of memory segments storing one or more index words each indicating a configuration for an associated node; characterized in that said virtual machine unit further includes: an index memory module to dynamically reconfigure an architecture of the node index memory, wherein each memory segment of the node index memory implements a dynamically specifiable memory architecture and at least two different memory segments enable different memory architectures, and wherein the memory architectures include an architecture storing index words of variable length in a non-sequential order of node identifiers within a segment, whereby the node index memory includes a table mapping each node identifier to an address of a corresponding index word in a segment for accessing the index words stored in the non-sequential order of node identifiers.