Barring poorly configured operating systems or pointer arithmetic, you shouldn't be /able/ to run into situations where your computer (rather than the program) crashes -- modern OS and language design focuses on preventing this errors, because they're often tied to attacks on the operating system. That's actually more true with Java and similar languages like C#, where direct memory access is hard, than in C.
That said, you are talking a 2-billion-deep set. The program itself is likely to run out of available memory space (or fail a m_alloc silently, causing something later to go terribly wrong) in a 32-bit Windows mode. Default java virtual machine settings also usually trend to significantly less memory than even that. You may want to test it in a smaller volume first.
It works fine in a smaller volume (and see cousin, I'm using a sparse array already so I only have to deal with about 10 million voxels in the final project.) I'm switching to Java because I'm pretty sure my computer can handle the data, so long as I'm not doing anything else in the meantime.
In an attempt to encourage more people to actually do awesome things (a la instrumental rationality), I am proposing a new monthly thread (can be changed to bi-weekly, should that be demanded). Your job, should you choose to accept it, is to comment on this thread explaining the most awesome thing you've done this month. You may be as blatantly proud of you self as you feel. You may unabashedly consider yourself the coolest freaking person ever because of that awesome thing you're dying to tell everyone about. This is the place to do just that.
Remember, however, that this isn't any kind of progress thread. Nor is it any kind of proposal thread.This thread is solely for people to talk about the awesomest thing they've done all month. not will do. not are working on. have already done. This is to cultivate an environment of object level productivity rather than meta-productivity methods.
So, what's the coolest thing you've done this month?