but prior to rowhammer it is also possible no-one ever thought to check for it It was known as "pattern sensitivity" in the industry for decades, basically eve

but prior to rowhammer it is also possible no-one ever thought to check for it It was known as "pattern sensitivity" in the industry for decades, basically ever since the beginning, and considered a blocking defect. Here's a random article from 1989 (don't know why first page is missing, but look at the references): http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~mazum/PAPERS-MAZUM/patternsensitive.pdf http://web.eecs.umich.edu/~mazum/PAPERS-MAZUM/patternsensiti... Then some bastards like these came along... https://research.ece.cmu.edu/safari/thesis/skhan_jobtalk_slides.pdf https://research.ece.cmu.edu/safari/thesis/skhan_jobtalk_sli... ...and essentially said "who cares, let someone else be responsible for the imperfections while we can sell more crap", leading to the current mess we're in. The flash memory industry took a similar dark turn decades ago.