Revisiting DRAM Read Disturbance: Identifying Inconsistencies Between Experimental Characterization and Device-Level Studies

• URL: http://arxiv.org/abs/2503.16749v2
• Date: Fri, 25 Apr 2025 13:42:17 GMT
• Title: Revisiting DRAM Read Disturbance: Identifying Inconsistencies Between Experimental Characterization and Device-Level Studies
• Authors: Haocong Luo, İsmail Emir Yüksel, Ataberk Olgun, A. Giray Yağlıkçı, Onur Mutlu,
• Abstract summary: We identify and extract the key bitflip characteristics of RowHammer and RowPress from device-level error mechanisms studied in prior works.<n>We find fundamental inconsistencies in the RowHammer and RowPress bitflip directions and access pattern dependence between experimental characterization results and the device-level error mechanisms.
• Score: 6.994584169884799
• License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
• Abstract: Modern DRAM is vulnerable to read disturbance (e.g., RowHammer and RowPress) that significantly undermines the robust operation of the system. Repeatedly opening and closing a DRAM row (RowHammer) or keeping a DRAM row open for a long period of time (RowPress) induces bitflips in nearby unaccessed DRAM rows. Prior works on DRAM read disturbance either 1) perform experimental characterization using commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) DRAM chips to demonstrate the high-level characteristics of the read disturbance bitflips, or 2) perform device-level simulations to understand the low-level error mechanisms of the read disturbance bitflips. In this paper, we attempt to align and cross-validate the real-chip experimental characterization results and state-of-the-art device-level studies of DRAM read disturbance. To do so, we first identify and extract the key bitflip characteristics of RowHammer and RowPress from the device-level error mechanisms studied in prior works. Then, we perform experimental characterization on 96 COTS DDR4 DRAM chips that directly match the data and access patterns studied in the device-level works. Through our experiments, we identify fundamental inconsistencies in the RowHammer and RowPress bitflip directions and access pattern dependence between experimental characterization results and the device-level error mechanisms. Based on our results, we hypothesize that either 1) the retention failure based DRAM architecture reverse-engineering methodologies do not fully work on modern DDR4 DRAM chips, or 2) existing device-level works do not fully uncover all the major read disturbance error mechanisms. We hope our findings inspire and enable future works to build a more fundamental and comprehensive understanding of DRAM read disturbance.

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