Crunchydata is Loading the World

A few days ago Crunchy Data published a blog post Loading the World! OpenStreetMap Import In Under 4 Hours showing how improvements in PostgreSQL, osm2pgsql, and the hardware in recent years have improved the performance of loading the OSM planet into a database significantly leading to an import time for the planet of less than 4 hours.

They are using some configuration options that are probably not great for general use, but if you know what you are doing they can give you that extra edge.