Some folks use the term "state element" to describe the set of things which hold state between clock cycles. Memories (e.g., SRAM) and registers are both examples of state elements.
I took the "You don't think about memories when you design hardware" paragraph from Yosef to mean that SRAM is so highly tuned that in most cases your best bet is to just use it "off the shelf" rather than invent some novel type of state element. And if you use SRAM, then you are stuck sucking through a small straw (e.g., an SRAM can hold 1K words, but you can only read 1 word/cycle).
I took the "You don't think about memories when you design hardware" paragraph from Yosef to mean that SRAM is so highly tuned that in most cases your best bet is to just use it "off the shelf" rather than invent some novel type of state element. And if you use SRAM, then you are stuck sucking through a small straw (e.g., an SRAM can hold 1K words, but you can only read 1 word/cycle).