HammerSim: A System-Level Tool to Model RowHammer

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Modern architecture research relies on simulators to evaluate system security, yet analyzing emerging hardware vulnerabilities like RowHammer requires full-system visibility. As RowHammer worsens with technology scaling, existing simulators lack the system-level models needed to study complex OS-level effects and cross-layer mitigation strategies, posing severe reliability and security risks. In this work, we present HammerSim, a gem5-based framework for modeling RowHammer at the full-system level. HammerSim integrates probability-driven bitflip modeling, and enables evaluation of hardware and software mitigations such as TRR and selective ECC. We validate HammerSim against real DDR4 DIMMs using JS divergence, demonstrating its utility in studying attacks, defenses, and benign workload susceptibility. Our framework provides an extensible platform to bridge the gap between hardware experiments and architectural simulation.

Citation

ArXiv Version:

@misc{goswami2026hammersimsystemleveltoolmodel,
      title={HammerSim: A System-Level Tool to Model RowHammer},
      author={Kaustav Goswami and Ayaz Akram and Hari Venugopalan and Jason Lowe-Power},
      year={2026},
      eprint={2605.27803},
      archivePrefix={arXiv},
      primaryClass={cs.CR},
      url={https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.27803},
}

Older YArch Version:

@inproceedings{goswami2023hammersim,
  title={Hammersim: A tool to model rowhammer},
  author={Goswami, Kaustav and Akram, Ayaz and Venugopalan, Hari and Lowe-Power, Jason},
  booktitle={Young Architect Workshop (YArch)},
  year={2023}
}