Find maximum value in huge text file

You are given the path to a very large text file on disk. The file has the following properties:

• Each line contains exactly one signed 64-bit integer (in decimal).
• The file size can be tens or hundreds of gigabytes, so it cannot be fully loaded into memory.
• You have standard file I/O APIs that allow you to read the file sequentially (e.g., line by line or in chunks).

Tasks

1. Single-machine solution
   Design an algorithm to compute the maximum integer value in this file.
   • Assume you have limited RAM (much smaller than the file size).
   • Discuss how you would read the file and track the result.
   • Give high-level pseudocode.
   • Analyze time and space complexity.
2. Performance improvement / parallelization
   Suppose you now have a multi-core machine or multiple machines available and want to speed up the computation.
   • How would you modify your approach to take advantage of parallelism (e.g., processing the file in chunks)?
   • Explain how you would combine partial results to get the global maximum.
   • Mention any edge cases or failure scenarios you would consider (e.g., very large values, empty file).

Assume you do not have a database; you are working directly with the file system and your programming language's standard I/O libraries.