strided

/str:'d*d/ (scientific computing) Said of a sequence of memory reads and writes to addresses, each of which is separated from the last by a constant interval called "the stride length", or just "the stride". These can be a worst-case access pattern for cache schemes when the stride length is a multiple of the cache line size.

Strided references are often generated by loops through an array, and (if the data is large enough that access-time is significant) it can be worthwhile to tune for better locality by inverting double loops or by partially unrolling the outer loop of a loop nest.

[Jargon File]