Brief Articles on Rowhammer

• Rowhammer terminology cheat sheet. Academics and DRAM industry both use a variety of terms when it comes to Rowhammer, row disturbance, and DRAM terminology. I put together a list of terms and I did my best to provide a definition for them.

• Background on DRAM and Rowhammer (video). If you need help with Rowhammer, watch my video presentation. Many other videos online provide background on Rowhammer (for example, check out Prof. Mutlu's lectures).

• DRFM (Directed Refresh Management). A new DDR5 command that can let a memory controller implement a decent form of Rowhammer protection.

• On setting thresholds for counter-based Rowhammer defenses. A class of Rowhammer defenses use counters to track the number of activations a DRAM row receives. When a counter reaches a threshold value, a remedy is performed. Some folks are surprised to learn that these thresholds must be set conservatively, to very low values, lower than a MAC. To explain, I wrote a short note on how to set thresholds for counter-based Rowhammer defenses.

• Per Row Activation Counting (PRAC). The updated DDR5 spec introduces PRAC, a mechanism that has the potential to put Rowhammer to rest once and for all.