You don't need the bigger machinery of a segmented sieve for such a small range. Here is a simple $O(n\log\log n)$ algorithm to calculate all $\mu(i)$ up to $n$ based on the Sieve of Erostothanes. In fact, the sieve **does** fully factor all the square-free numbers; it just doesn't do it one at a time. Depending on your computer, this approach is practical up to around $2^{30}$ at which point you need to start using higher-precision arithmetic and computing a range of $\mu(i)$ values in batches. <!-- language: c# --> public static int[] GetMu(int max) { var sqrt = (int)Math.Floor(Math.Sqrt(max)); var mu = new int[max + 1]; for (int i = 1; i <= max; i++) mu[i] = 1; for (int i = 2; i <= sqrt; i++) { if (mu[i] == 1) { for (int j = i; j <= max; j += i) mu[j] *= -i; for (int j = i * i; j <= max; j += i * i) mu[j] = 0; } } for (int i = 2; i <= max; i++) { if (mu[i] == i) mu[i] = 1; else if (mu[i] == -i) mu[i] = -1; else if (mu[i] < 0) mu[i] = 1; else if (mu[i] > 0) mu[i] = -1; } return mu; } Running `GetMu(1000000)` takes about 10 msec on my computer.