Per-Row Activation Counting on Real Hardware: Demystifying Performance OverheadsJumin Kim, Seungmin Baek, Minbok Wi, Hwayong Nam, Michael Jaemin Kim, Sukhan Lee, Kyomin Sohn, Jung Ho Ahnhttps://arxiv.org/abs/2507.05556
Per-Row Activation Counting on Real Hardware: Demystifying Performance OverheadsPer-Row Activation Counting (PRAC), a DRAM read disturbance mitigation method, modifies key DRAM timing parameters, reportedly causing significant performance overheads in simulator-based studies. However, given known discrepancies between simulators and real hardware, real-machine experiments are vital for accurate PRAC performance estimation. We present the first real-machine performance analysis of PRAC. After verifying timing modifications on the latest CPUs using microbenchmarks, our analy…