Join us for our upcoming SAFARI Live Seminar:
Speaker: Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı, SAFARI Research Group, ETH Zürich
Date: Wednesday, January 17 2024, 17:00 Zurich time (CET)
Where: ETZ E81 & Livestream on YouTube (Link)
Title: A Deeper Look into RowHammer’s Characteristics in Real Modern DRAM Chips
This is part one of a two-part talk in which Giray will present his PhD work.
Details on part two can be found here.
Abstract:
RowHammer is a circuit-level DRAM vulnerability where repeatedly accessing (i.e., hammering) a DRAM row can cause bit flips in physically nearby rows. As the RowHammer vulnerability worsens with shrinking DRAM cell size and cell-to-cell spacing, ensuring RowHammer-safe operation becomes more expensive in terms of performance overhead, energy consumption, and hardware complexity. To effectively secure current and future systems against RowHammer, it is essential to develop a better understanding and in-depth insights into the RowHammer vulnerability of modern DRAM chips.
In this talk, we present an experimental characterization study using 272 modern DRAM chips from major DRAM manufacturers, demonstrating how the RowHammer effects vary with 1) DRAM chip temperature, 2) aggressor row active time, 3) victim DRAM cell’s physical location, and 4) wordline voltage. We highlight that a RowHammer bitflip is more likely to occur 1) in a bounded temperature range, 2) if the aggressor row is active for a longer time, 3) in certain physical regions of the DRAM module, and 4) with larger voltage toggling magnitude on the aggressor row’s wordline. Our study has important practical implications on future RowHammer attacks and defenses.
Speaker Bio:
Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı is a Ph.D. candidate in the Safari Research Group at ETH Zürich, working with Prof. Onur Mutlu. His current broader research interests are computer architecture, systems, and hardware security, focusing on DRAM robustness and performance. In particular, his Ph.D. research focuses on understanding and solving the RowHammer vulnerability, on which he has several publications. Giray received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and M.Sc. degree in Computer Engineering from TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara, Turkiye and he holds a second M.Sc. in Computer Science from University of Notre Dame, IN, USA. Giray holds an honorable mention from the Intel Hardware Security Academic Award, 2021, and is the First-Place winner in the graduate category of Student Research Competition in PACT, 2023. Giray’s research is partly supported by Google and the Microsoft Swiss Joint Research Center.
Relevant Papers
- Lois Orosa,* Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı,* Haocong Luo, Ataberk Olgun, Jisung Park, Hasan Hassan, Minesh Patel, Jeremie S. Kim, and Onur Mutlu, “A Deeper Look into RowHammer’s Sensitivities: Experimental Analysis of Real DRAM Chips and Implications on Future Attacks and Defenses,” in MICRO, 2021. ∗contributed equally to this work.
- A. Giray Yağlıkçı, Haocong Luo, Geraldo F. de Oliveira, Ataberk Olgun, Minesh Patel, Jisung Park, Hasan Hassan, Jeremie S. Kim, Lois Orosa, and Onur Mutlu, “Understanding RowHammer Under Reduced Wordline Voltage: An Experimental Study Using Real DRAM Devices,” in DSN, 2022.
- Abdullah Giray Yağlıkçı, Geraldo Francisco de Oliveira, Yahya Can Tugrul, Ismail Yuksel, Ataberk Olgun, Haocong Luo, and Onur Mutlu, “Spatial Variation-Aware Read Disturbance Defenses: Experimental Analysis of Real DRAM Chips and Implications on Future Solutions,” to appear in HPCA, 2024. (A short poster preprint is available here)