MATLAB: Importing large 4GB+ tab-delimited ascii file makes MATLAB crash

importing large ascii crash tab delimited

i didnt have a problem until now the data files have been scaled up in complexity
i usually use 
IMPORT = importdata('components.dat')
in this case components.dat is 4 GB+
it is a table of numerical values consisting of 12 columns and millions of rows
for smaller models this has worked but now MATLAB crashes when i try to import at this size.
I have 96GB of RAM and dual Xeons.
Do i need to change setting in MATLAB or is there better ways to import this data
this is an exmaple of the file
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -2.0000E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.409E-15  -2.138E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9900E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.410E-15  -2.193E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9800E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.411E-15  -2.249E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9700E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.412E-15  -2.306E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9600E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.411E-15  -2.364E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9500E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.411E-15  -2.424E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9400E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.409E-15  -2.485E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9300E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.407E-15  -2.547E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9200E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.405E-15  -2.611E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9100E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.401E-15  -2.676E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.9000E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.397E-15  -2.742E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.8900E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.392E-15  -2.810E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
   1         0.01       -50.00         0.00     -3950.00 -1.8800E+04    0.000       -4000.        -1.386E-15  -2.879E-15    0.00E+00   0.00E+00
it is tab delimited

Best Answer

thank you for your answers. I found a very simple solution
using
M = dlmread('filename.dat')
as my data is asscii-delimited file of numerical data
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