When performing non-sequential accesses to large data sets, hot spots may be avoided by permuting the memory locations being accesses to more evenly spread those accesses across the memory and across multiple memory channels. A permutation step may be used when accessing data, such as to improve the distribution of those memory accesses within the system. Instead of accessing one memory address, that address may be permuted so that another memory address is accessed. Non-sequential accesses to an array may be modified such that each index to the array is permuted to another index in the array. Collisions between pre- and post-translation addresses may be prevented and one-to-one mappings may be used. Permutation mechanisms may be implemented in software, hardware, or a combination of both, with or without the knowledge of the process performing the memory accesses.