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

deater 112 points 31 comments May 01, 2026
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Discussion Highlights (5 comments)

akkartik

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

DespairYeMighty

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

deater

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...

dyauspitr

I’m never heard of that term.

fao_

Damn, three years younger than one of my parents. A real shame. Call your loved ones :(

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