Document Type
Thesis
Date of Award
12-31-2025
Degree Name
Master of Science in Computer Engineering - (M.S.)
Department
Electrical and Computer Engineering
First Advisor
Shaahin Angizi
Second Advisor
Dong Kyun Ko
Third Advisor
Anirudh Sridhar
Abstract
Modern DRAM scaling has reduced cell capacitance and increased thermal sensitivity, making disturbance-based faults such as RowHammer and RowPress increasingly significant reliability and security concerns. RowHammer induces bit flips through repeated row activations, while RowPress does so by holding a wordline open for an extended duration; both exploit inherent capacitive coupling and leakage mechanisms in dense DRAM arrays. This thesis introduces HeatHammer, a thermally assisted disturbance exploit that interleaves RowPress and RowHammer operations to amplify charge leakage and trigger row-traversing bit flips. Using the FPGA-based DRAM-Bender test platform, HeatHammer is evaluated on four commercially available DDR4 modules from different manufacturers under controlled thermal cycling. Experimental results demonstrate that elevated temperature significantly increases both disturbance strength and the distance over which bit flips can occur. Certain modules exhibits hundreds of row-traversing bit flips at 50°C, while others show minimal traversal but heightened retention-related failures, revealing substantial architectural and fabrication-dependent variation. These observations further highlight limitations in existing mitigation mechanisms, including Target Row Refresh (TRR), which remains insufficient under thermal stress. Overall, this work provides the first systematic characterization of the HeatHammer exploit and underscores the need for thermally aware reliability modeling and more robust, next-generation disturbance-mitigation strategies as DRAM technology continues to scale.
Recommended Citation
Tronnes-Christensen, Filip Roth, "Heathammer: Effects of thermal stress on dram technology reliability using rowpress and rowhammer" (2025). Theses. 3347.
https://digitalcommons.njit.edu/theses/3347
