diff -up diffutils-3.3/src/analyze.c.me diffutils-3.3/src/analyze.c
--- diffutils-3.3/src/analyze.c.me	2022-12-13 23:52:03.027335306 +0100
+++ diffutils-3.3/src/analyze.c	2022-12-13 23:56:10.918974724 +0100
@@ -575,11 +575,12 @@ diff_2_files (struct comparison *cmp)
       ctxt.heuristic = speed_large_files;
 
       /* Set TOO_EXPENSIVE to be approximate square root of input size,
-	 bounded below by 256.  */
+	 bounded below by 4096. 4096 seems to be good for
+         circa-2016 CPUs; see Bug#16848 and Bug#24715  */
       too_expensive = 1;
       for (;  diags != 0;  diags >>= 2)
 	too_expensive <<= 1;
-      ctxt.too_expensive = MAX (256, too_expensive);
+      ctxt.too_expensive = MAX (4096, too_expensive);
 
       files[0] = cmp->file[0];
       files[1] = cmp->file[1];