In order to make Nuxeo Drive less impacting on the OS, we should profile code parts that are not memory efficient. Such as when a lot of I/O is in the loop.
So, before doing anything:
1. Profile part of Drive and the Python client that deal with I/O to catch useless data copies (I am talking about https://julien.danjou.info/high-performance-in-python-with-zero-copy-and-the-buffer-protocol/).
2. If such holes are found, fix them at the lowest lovel possible (the Python client, if applicable).