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Sally McKee, who coined the term "the memory wall", has died

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deater4 hours ago

There are probably so many stories out there of interesting things she did. A few are breifly referenced at her old website here: https://web.archive.org/web/20060116130917/http://www.csl.co...

DespairYeMighty4 hours ago

She was a CS PhD and somewhat itinerant professor with a long career who wrote a prominent CS paper about computer memory, Hitting the Memory Wall: Implications of the Obvious

https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/216585.216588

on her obituary page, you will see a prominent "Memory Wall" link that is NOT a reference to her paper, but a place for sharing your thoughts about her life

deater4 hours ago

you wouldn't believe how many people cite that paper as "Wulf et al." when that's practically more characters than saying "Wulf and McKee"

I notice these things a bit more as she was my PhD thesis advisor

marricks2 hours ago

There's only two authors! That's so rude!

SecretDreams43 minutes ago

et al should never be applied when only two authors!!!

b473a1 hour ago

Yeah tenure is nice but there's just a hint of mystery behind the title "itinerant professor." Like a wizard that just pops up in places to work computer science magic.

akkartik4 hours ago

My dissertation was on the memory wall, and I never heard of her :/ RIP

AnimalMuppet2 hours ago

Could you (or someone else in the know) give us a brief overview of the current state of the memory wall issue?

akkartik56 minutes ago

Oh my knowledge is woefully out of date. But I believe the memory wall is a fact of life for the most part. Like many others, I nibbled around the edges of the constraint at massive cost in increased complexity. Outside of very specific exceptions the cure tends to be worse than the disease.

dirtbagskier53 minutes ago

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