Dictionary.net

/str:'d*d/ (scientific computing) Said of a sequence of memoryreads and writes to addresses, each of which is separated fromthe last by a constant interval called "the stride length", orjust "the stride". These can be a worst-case access patternfor cache schemes when the stride length is a multiple ofthe cache line size.Strided references are often generated by loops through anarray, and (if the data is large enough that access-time issignificant) it can be worthwhile to tune for better localityby inverting double loops or by partially unrolling the outerloop of a loop nest.