Progressive Detection and Response to Row Hammer Attack
AssigneeMicron Technology, Inc.
InventorsKai Wang, Minjian Wu
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system to progressively generate responses configured to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attacks. Between two successive refreshing of memory cells in a memory device, increasing thresholds are used to detect row hammer attacks. For example, after a first alert of row hammer attacks is generated using a first lower threshold, a first operation associated with the first lower threshold is initiated to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attack; and a second higher threshold is used to detect row hammer attacks. After a second alert of row hammer attacks is generated using the second lower threshold, a second operation associated with the second lower threshold is initiated to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attack.
Claims20
A method, comprising:
- counting activation commands in a memory device after first refreshing memory cells in the memory device;
- and
- prior to second refreshing of the memory cells following successively the first refreshing:
- determining a first count of activation commands in the memory device;
- generating a first alert in response to the first count being above a first threshold;
- starting a first operation configured to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attacks in response to the first alert;
- determining a second count of activation commands in the memory device;
- generating a second alert in response to the second count being above a second threshold higher than the first threshold;
- and
- starting a second operation configured to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attacks in response to the second alert.
A memory device, comprising:
- a register configured to store a threshold;
- and
- a circuit configured to determine whether a count of activation commands in the memory device is above the threshold stored in the register and generate an alert in response to the count being above the threshold;
- wherein the threshold is a first threshold;
- and
- wherein after the alert and before restarting counting of activation commands, the memory device is configured to further replace, in the register, the first threshold with a second threshold higher than the first threshold.
A computing device, comprises:
- a memory device;
- and
- at least one processing device coupled to the memory device to execute instructions of an application;
- wherein in response to a first alert of a count of activation commands in the memory device being above a first threshold, the at least one processing device is configured to start a first operation configured to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attacks;
- and
- wherein in response to a second alert of a count of activation commands in the memory device being above a second threshold higher the first threshold, the at least one processing device is configured to start a second operation configured to mitigate risk associated with row hammer attacks.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.