During the last decade, ptychography has emerged as an invaluable method for X-ray microscopy at synchrotron facilities. It combines scanning microscopy with coherent diffractive imaging, delivering quantitative images of extended specimens at diffraction-limited resolution, surpassing the limits of focusing optics. Hence, ptychographic microscopes position themselves as the natural successor of conventional scanning transmission X-ray microscopy (STXM), since future upgrades at synchrotrons promise almost entirely coherent sources. Then again, probing the sample both in real and in reciprocal space (ie 4D) to obtain its goal, ptychography demands for its phase retrieval algorithms to operate on very large data sets which, in turn, poses high demands to the computational hardware.