Yes, it seems you are right. Maybe it was about dividing 16-machines into two 8-machines groups, which is 16!/(8!*2!) = 259.459.200 possibilities (correct me if I am wrong). This, too, doesn't look like apocalypse, but hey, there is still 64-machines group :)

Anyway, at the meeting, the speaker was talking so loud I couldn't focus on the problem! :) Only AI::Genetic came to my mind, what I tried yesterday, but this package doesn't work well with 'find best permutation' problems. I found only some C implementations on the web, which must be adopted to perl. When I develop working example, I'll paste it in monastery.