Thermal- and Aging-Aware Rowhammer Vulnerability Analysis of Monolithically-Integrated IWO eDRAM for Edge Platforms

Rowhammer poses an escalating threat to the reliability of volatile memory, particularly as memory density increases with advances in integration technology. This work presents the first comprehensive temperature- and aging-aware vulnerability analysis of amorphous Indium Tungsten Oxide (IWO) embedded DRAM (eDRAM), a promising next-generation memory for monolithic 3D (M3D) integration. Our study accounts for the effects of temperature variation, fine-grain activation, memory cell sizing, and BTI-based aging profiles. The aging profiles are constructed from real-system Gem5 application benchmarks and their associated memory access patterns. We show how these factors influence vulnerability profiles of IWO eDRAM over time. In addition, we identify vertical-vulnerability disturbances in memory-on-memory integration. To guide future emerging-memory integration and read-disturb mitigation strategies, we characterize an aging-aware vulnerability profile and quantify the mitigation cost, i.e., the cost of applying an architectural memory-controller defense. In conjunction, we provide physical design insights to mitigate vertical disturbances in M3D integration scenarios by up to two orders of magnitude.