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

Sally McKee, the computer scientist who coined the influential term 'the memory wall' in her seminal 1994 paper, has passed away at 61. Her work highlighted the growing performance gap between processors and memory, shaping decades of computer architecture research. McKee was also known for her mentorship and contributions to cybersecurity research.

Background

The 'memory wall' refers to the performance bottleneck caused by the growing speed disparity between processors and memory systems. McKee's 1994 paper brought widespread attention to this fundamental challenge in computer architecture.

Source
hackernews
Published
May 1, 2026 at 10:45 PM
Score
6.0 / 10