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

3 comments

• deater 2 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...
• DespairYeMighty 2 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

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  • b473a 0 minutes 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.
  • deater 2 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

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    • marricks 1 hour ago
      There's only two authors! That's so rude!
• akkartik 2 hours ago
  My dissertation was on the memory wall, and I never heard of her :/ RIP
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  • AnimalMuppet 50 minutes ago
    Could you (or someone else in the know) give us a brief overview of the current state of the memory wall issue?