The most advanced and provable methods to counter Row Hammer attacks has long been UPMEM’s priority. Recently a new and complete version of this solution (a.k.a. Silver Bullet: see UPMEM’s U.S. patent 10,885,966-B1) has been revealed to the public through the Linley’s Microprocessor report.
The Row Hammer effect is the fact that activating many times a given DRAM ROW, may alter the content of adjacent Rows. Since potentially allowing the alteration of a memory location without accessing it, the Row Hammer effect is a useful tool for hackers (privilege escalation, DOS).
UPMEM holds several patents solving the Row Hammer effect in regular DRAMs and PIM-DRAMs. This technology ensures in a provable way that no Row Hammer of any nature, malicious or accidental, can occur. All UPMEM PIM DIMMs are manufactured with Row Hammer suppression and the innovation is available to all DRAM manufacturers through licensing.
When used as classical, non-PIM memory, the UPMEM modules (v1.5) are the only Row Hammer free memory module on the market, a property precious for highly secure systems. When used as PIM-DIMM, the logic prevents Row Hammer, making this a non-issue for the PIM application.
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