Periodic Refresh Research Articles

Bridging the Academia/Industry Chasm: Proposed Solutions.

Bridging the Academia/Industry Chasm: Proposed Solutions.

Exploiting Refresh Effect of DRAM Read Operations: A Practical Approach to Low-Power Refresh

Dynamic random access memory (DRAM) requires periodic refresh operations to retain its data. In practice, DRAM retention times are normally distributed from 64 ms to several seconds. However, the conventional refresh method uses 64 ms as the refresh interval, since it applies the same refresh interval to all DRAM rows. Thus, the conventional refresh method results in unnecessary refresh operations (eventually, energy waste) to the DRAM rows whose retention times are longer than 64 ms. In this paper, we propose a practical refresh scheme that exploits refresh effect of DRAM read operations to reduce refresh overhead. Our proposed scheme applies a refresh interval longer than the conventional refresh interval (64 ms) to the DRAM chip. In this case, weak DRAM rows (DRAM rows whose retention times are shorter than the refresh interval of the DRAM chip) cannot retain their data. In order to retain the data stored in the weak DRAM rows, the memory controller issues read operations to the weak DRAM rows every required refresh interval for the weak DRAM rows. Our evaluation results show that our proposed scheme with 192 ms refresh interval reduces average refresh energy consumption up to 66.0 percent, which in turn reduces average DRAM energy consumption up to 31.8 percent, compared to the conventional refresh method (64 ms). Our proposed scheme requires no modification to internal DRAM chip structures, but it only adds a small weak row buffer (the buffer for the weak row information) to the memory controller, which has a negligible area overhead.

Corporal Punishment: Parents Perception in District Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan


 
 
 This paper shed light on parent’s psychological perception about children corporal punishment in District Malakand, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan. A total of 202 respondents (parents) were selected through simple random sampling procedure to portray information. Chi square χ2 and Gamma statistics were used to determine the level of association and strength and direction of relationship. Majority of the respondents i.e. 82.7% had opined that corporal punishment increases aggressiveness in children, it promotes depression (82.2%), fear and terror 153(75.7), eliminate confidence and damage IQ of children146 (72.3). Moreover, at bivariate level a positive (γ=.977) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment increases aggressiveness with corporal punishment. A positive (γ=.972) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment promotes depression with corporal punishment. Similarly, A positive (γ=.954) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment stimulate nervousness with corporal punishment. A positive (γ=.944) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment leads to fear and terror with corporal punishment. A positive (γ=.914) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment eliminate confidence with corporal punishment. A positive (γ=.913) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment damage IQ of children with corporal punishment. Apositive (γ=.915) with significant relationship (P<0.05) was discovered between corporal punishment decline feelings of sympathy with corporal punishment. It is concluded from the study findings that corporal punishment results in emotional distress, lack of confidence, increase aggressiveness, fear and terror, depression, damage IQ of children etc. Regular periodic refreshers courses need to be arranged by the education department to emphasize the worse effects of corporal punishment and certain psychological assessment tests of children at school by medical officers to mitigate the social and psychological distress, as resulted from use of corporal punishment.
 
 

Which Knowledge and Skills Do Participants Retain after Attending Medical Education Training Workshops?

The Aga Khan University (AKU) renewed its undergraduate curriculum and incorporated Problem Based Learning (PBL) as one of the main teaching strategies in years one and two. PBL requires a huge pool of facilitators. Recent AKU graduates were recruited as Teaching Assistants (TAs) to support teaching. A faculty development program was conducted to prepare TAs for their teaching role. This study aimed to evaluate the effectiveness of a faculty development program (conducted in two parts) in increasing knowledge, skills and teaching performance of the participants and assess the long term retention of knowledge by participants. A longitudinal, mixed method, evaluation study was conducted at Aga Khan University from 2006-2008. The participants included all eleven TAs recruited by AKU. Workshop evaluation forms, pre, post and delayed post test and student evaluations of TAs teaching performance were used to gather data. Evaluation of the PBL workshop was much better than the one on broader aspects of medical education since the PBL workshop was in line with the participants’ goals. TAs reported perceived improvement in PBL facilitation skills. Student evaluations of TAs facilitation skills validated this perception. The workshop helped improve knowledge (p = 0.036), which increased on immediate post-test but decayed at the end of year on delayed post-test. Short training programs lead to increase in knowledge, skills and improved teaching performance. The participants retain knowledge and skills which are applied while those that are not applied regularly decay over time. Regular, periodic refreshers should be instituted to reinforce and retain knowledge and skills.

Energy-Efficient eDRAM-Based On-Chip Storage Architecture for GPGPUs

In a typical GPGPU, the on-chip storage is critical to the massive parallelism and is desired to be large. However, the fast increasing size of the on-chip storage based on traditional SRAM cells, such as register file (RF), shared memory and first level data (L1D) cache, makes the area cost and energy consumption unsustainable for future GPGPUs. In this paper, we first propose to use the embedded-DRAM (eDRAM) as an alternative for the on-chip storage. Compared to the conventional SRAM, eDRAM enables higher density and lower leakage power, but suffers from limited data retention time. Periodic refresh operation is a viable approach to maintain data integrity but aggravates the performance and energy consumption with the scaling of eDRAM cells into deep sub-micron technology nodes. To recover the performance loss, we exploit the features in the GPGPU architecture and propose various novel refresh schemes to mitigate the refresh penalty. To improve the energy efficiency, we apply lightweight compiler techniques and runtime monitoring for selective refreshing that intelligently eliminate the unnecessary refreshes. The evaluation on our proposed refresh schemes demonstrates that, comparing to the conventional SRAM-based designs, our eDRAM-based on-chip storage exhibits comparable performance but less energy consumption and smaller silicon area, enabling the sustainable on-chip storage scaling for even higher parallelism in future GPGPUs.

Knowledge and practices of infection control among healthcare workers in a Tertiary Referral Center in North-Western Nigeria.

Background:Healthcare acquired infections (HCAIs) otherwise call nosocomial infection is associated with increased morbidity and mortality among hospitalized patients and predisposes healthcare workers (HCWs) to an increased risk of infections. The study explores the knowledge and practices of infection control among HCW in a tertiary referral center in North-Western Nigeria.Materials and Methods:This is a cross-sectional study. A self-administered structured questionnaire was distributed to the study group (of doctors and nurses). Data on knowledge and practice of infection control were obtained and analyzed. Study population were selected by convenience sampling.Results:A total of 200 responses were analyzed, 152 were nurses while 48 were doctors. The median age and years of working experience of the respondents were 35 years (interquartile range [IQR] 31–39) and 7 years (IQR 4–12), respectively. Most of the respondents 174/198 (87.9%) correctly identified hand washing as the most effective method to prevent HCAI, with nurses having better knowledge 139/152 (91%) (P = 0.001). Majority agreed that avoiding injury with sharps 172/200 (86%), use of barrier precaution 180/200 (90%) and hand hygiene 184/200 (92%) effectively prevent HCAI. Only 88/198 (44.4%), 122/198 (61.6%), and 84/198 (42.4%) of the respondents were aware of the risks of infection following exposure to human immunodeficiency virus, hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus-infected blood, respectively. About 52% of doctors and 76% of nurses (P = 0.002) always practice hand hygiene in between patient care.Conclusion:Gaps have been identified in knowledge and practice of infection control among doctors’ and nurses’ in the study; hence, it will be beneficial for all HCW to receive formal and periodic refresher trainings.

Cross-sectional comparative study of the effect of refresher training on the knowledge, attitude and practices of urban primary health care providers

Background: Primary health care providers, who cater to the basic health care needs in urban and rural areas, ought to have the basic knowledge and a positive attitude in relation to the services they deliver. This cross-sectional, complete-enumeration, before-and-after study was conducted to determine the outcome of refresher training on the knowledge, attitudes and practices of auxiliary nurse midwives (ANMs), and link workers (LWs) in an urban area in Western India . Methods: Each willing participant answered a structured pre-test questionnaire containing 25 questions in the local language (Marathi), following which, Government-approved refresher training (3 days for ANMs and 1 day for LWs) was conducted in the same language. The participants took the same questionnaire after the refresher training (post-test). The pre- and post-test scores were tabulated and statistically analysed. Results: In case of ANMs (n=60), the post-test scores (mean=20.7; SD=1.8) improved over the pre-test scores (mean=17.5; SD=2.76). The LWs (n=170) also bettered their post-test scores (mean=20.9; SD=2.52), over their pre-test scores (mean=14.4; SD=4.41). The degree of improvement in scores varied from marginal to statistically significant. Conclusions: Though the post-test results were encouraging, sustained efforts would be required to bring about the desired attitudes and practices. As a consequence of the widespread use of mobile phones, it is possible to conduct periodic refresher training through mobile phones at a much lower cost.

Adaptive refresh structure for gain cell embedded DRAM

Recently, gain cell eDRAMs have been attractive alternatives to SRAM and 1T1C DRAM for high density and logic-compatible embedded memories. The refresh period is traditionally determined according to the highest working temperature and worst-case access statistics, which results in a short refresh period and large refresh power. In this paper, an adaptive refresh structure is proposed to increase the refresh period and reduce the refresh power for gain cell eDRAMs in space application. A replica row of weak gain cells is inserted into the gain cell eDRAM bank to trace the chip temperature and access statistics and it is checked periodically to control the refresh period adaptively. A gain cell eDRAM bank of 256×256 with the structure is designed and simulated in SMIC 130nm logic process. Simulation results show the proposed structure traces chip temperature and access statistics efficiently and closely, and it reduces the refresh power by about 95.2% compared with traditional fixed period design.

Effect of First Aid Education on First Aid Knowledge and Skills of Commercial Drivers in South West Nigeria.

Prompt prehospital care is essential for improving outcomes of road crash victims; however, this service is sub-optimal in developing countries because Emergency Medical Services (EMS) are not readily available. Training of lay responders in first aid has been suggested as a means of filling this gap in settings with inadequate EMS. This study was conducted to determine the effect of first aid training on the first aid knowledge and skills of commercial drivers. A before-and-after study was conducted among 128 commercial drivers (62 intervention and 66 controls) selected by multi-stage sampling. Drivers' first aid knowledge and skills were assessed at baseline, immediate, and three months post-intervention. The intervention involved a 2-day training session in first aid. Repeated measures ANOVA was used to test for differences in respondents' pre- and post-intervention scores over the three assessment points. Mean first aid knowledge scores for intervention drivers were 48.9% (SD=12.0), 57.8% (SD=11.2), and 59.2% (SD=9.0) at baseline, immediate, and three months post-intervention. Corresponding scores for the controls were 48.3% (SD=12.8), 39.2% (SD=15.3), and 46.8% (SD=15.3). Mean first aid skill scores for intervention drivers were 17.5% (SD=3.8), 80.7% (SD=8.3), and 72.3% (SD=16.8). Scores for control drivers were 16.5% (SD=4.5), 16.3% (SD=4.7), and 20.4% (SD=9.1), respectively. Repeated measures ANOVA showed significant differences in first aid knowledge and skills scores over the three phases. Independent t-test revealed significant differences in scores between the intervention and control groups post-intervention. The training led to significant improvement in first aid knowledge and skills of intervention drivers. This confirms that lay responders can be trained in provision of first aid. The slight drop in skills scores, which occurred three months post-intervention, highlights the need for periodic refresher trainings to be conducted for the drivers in order to maintain the knowledge and skills acquired.

What motivates antibiotic dispensing in accredited drug dispensing outlets in Tanzania? A qualitative study.

BackgroundTanzania introduced the accredited drug dispensing outlet (ADDO) program more than a decade ago. Previous evaluations have generally shown that ADDOs meet defined standards of practice better than non-accredited outlets. However, ADDOs still face challenges with overuse of antibiotics for acute respiratory infections (ARI) and simple diarrhea, which contributes to the emergence of drug resistance. This study aimed to explore the attitudes of ADDO owners and dispensers toward antibiotic dispensing and to learn how accreditation has influenced their dispensing behavior.MethodsThe study used a qualitative approach. We conducted in-depth interviews with ADDO owners and dispensers in Ruvuma and Tanga regions where the government implemented the ADDO program under centralized and decentralized approaches, respectively; a secondary aim was to compare differences between the two regions.ResultsFindings indicate that the ADDO program has brought about positive changes in knowledge of dispensing practices. Respondents were able to correctly explain treatment guidelines for ARI and diarrhea. Almost all dispensers and owners indicated that unnecessary use of antibiotics contributed to antimicrobial resistance. Despite this knowledge, translating it to appropriate dispensing practice is still low. Dispensers’ behavior is driven by customer demand, habit (“mazoea”), following inappropriate health facility prescriptions, and the need to make a profit. Although the majority of dispensers reported that they had intervened in situations where customers asked for antibiotics unnecessarily, they tended to give in to clients’ requests. Small variations were noted between the two study regions; for example, some dispensers in Ruvuma reported sending clients with incorrect prescriptions back to the health facility, a practice that may reflect regional differences in ADDO implementation and in Integrated Management of Childhood Illness training. Dispensers in rural settings reported more challenges in managing ARI and diarrhea than their urban counterparts did.ConclusionTo reduce inappropriate antibiotic use, integrated interventions must include communities, health facilities, and ADDOs. Periodic refresher training with an emphasis on communication skills is crucial in helping dispensers deal with customers who demand antibiotics. Responsible authorities should ensure that ADDOs always have the necessary tools and resources available.

AVERT: An elaborate model for simulating variable retention time in DRAMs

In DRAMs, stored data on a capacitor tend to leak over time because of leakage current. To retain data, DRAMs require periodic refresh based on a profile of retention time. However, accurate DRAM refresh characterization is hindered by variable retention time (VRT) owing to random telegraph noise. In this paper, we propose AVERT, a device model and circuit simulation methodology for variable retention time in DRAMs. Based on the charge trapping and detrapping model, we generate a random telegraph signal in trap-induced gate leakage and trap-assisted gate-induced drain leakage to model random fluctuations in the retention time of DRAMs. With AVERT, we apply a stochastic device model of variable retention time to circuit simulation. Our results demonstrate the feasibility of simulating DRAM with random telegraph noise in leakage current and correspond closely to experimental results from prior publications. Based on observations from experimental data, we provide some insight into how to optimize the test time per cell and how to reduce the overall test time of a DRAM considering VRT.

SECRET

DRAMs are used as the main memory in most computing systems today. Studies show that DRAMs contribute to a significant part of overall system power consumption. One of the main challenges in low-power DRAM design is the inevitable refresh process. Due to process variation, memory cells exhibit retention time variations. Current DRAMs use a single refresh period determined by the cell with the largest leakage. Since prolonging refresh intervals introduces retention errors, a set of previous works adopt conventional error-correcting code (ECC) to correct retention errors. However, these approaches introduce significant area and energy overheads. In this article, we propose a novel error correction framework for retention errors in DRAMs, called SECRET (selective error correction for refresh energy reduction). The key observations we make are that retention errors are hard errors rather than soft errors, and only few DRAM cells have large leakage. Therefore, instead of equipping error correction capability for all memory cells as existing ECC schemes, we only allocate error correction information to leaky cells under a refresh interval. Our SECRET framework contains two parts: an offline phase to identify memory cells with retention errors given a target error rate and a low-overhead error correction mechanism. The experimental results show that among all test cases performed, the proposed SECRET framework can reduce refresh power by 87.2% and overall DRAM power up to 18.57% with negligible area and performance overheads.

Write Once, Read Forever (WORF)—Proof-Of-Concept Demonstrated For Archival Data Storage Using Interference Spectra

Based on a proven, century-old archival technique, we have successfully demonstrated the feasibility of storing high density, multi-state data in the form of interference gratings embedded in archival silver halide media. Data stored as interference gratings cannot be erased remotely, or altered after writing and processing, yielding a verifiable backup storage tier for archives and data security applications. WORF is engineered to be a permanent and low energy data storage medium not requiring periodic refreshing or authentication. Should the original reading devices be lost in the far future, human visible instructions for creating a reading device and decoding the formats—a digital “Rosetta Stone”—are included on the data media. The unalterable WORF medium has ancillary uses for other critical data storage applications such as securing an operating system against hacking, and verifying data transactions.

IMPACT OF PROTOCOL OF CARE REGARDING CHILDHOOD PNEUMONIA ON NURSES' KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE

Pneumonia is an inflammation and consolidation of lung parenchyma. The aim of the current study was to determine the impact of implementing protocol of care for childhood pneumonia on nurses' knowledge and practice. A quasi-experimental study was used and carried out at pediatric wards of El-Nasr, Port SaidGeneral, and Port-Fouad General Hospitals. The subjects were comprised of 44 nurses and 25 children with pneumonia. The data was collected using an interview questionnaire sheet to assess nurses' knowledgeand observational checklists to assess nurses' practice as well asa data sheet of children with pneumonia. The study’s results indicated thatmore than half of them had an average knowledge scores level before application of the protocol; but immediately after implementation of the protocol, a vast majority of the studied nurses had good level; meanwhile after 12 weeks (follow up), three-quarters of them had good level. Regarding nurses' level of practice(100%)of the studied nurses had poor level in pre test; while in post test the majority of them (84%) had good level regarding their level of practice and after 12 weeks as a follow- up 95.5%of them had average level. The study’s results concluded that the designed protocol of care regarding childhood pneumonia had highly statistical significant differences in the studied nurses' knowledge and practice. The study recommended that periodic refreshing training courses should be provided to nurses in order to keep them up to date in knowledge and practice regarding care of childhood pneumonia.

Write Once, Read Forever (WORF): Low-energy storage in perpetuity of high-density, multi-state data

Successful archiving of data requires a storage medium capable of persisting for times measured in centuries, and providing an absolute trust in supportable and permanent hardware. While all media decay, data on magnetic media, solid-state drives and conventional optical disks must be cyclically refreshed over relatively short time frames, requiring energy and labor resources. We propose a "Write-Once, Read Forever" (WORF) module specifically engineered for long-term preservation of digital data. It uses a novel high-density data storage medium based on silver halide, which has been demonstrated to last for more than a century under normal ambient environmental conditions. Once data is written to WORF, energy is needed only for reading—no periodic refresh is necessary, and data is both immutable and truly permanent. Human readable text and images are embedded in the WORF module adjacent to the digital data. This text and imagery contains metainformation about the media's content, and instructions for decoding for future generations. WORF digital data is stored as microscopic, metallic interference gratings (representing wavelengths or "colors") embedded in a modern, super-resolution, dye-free, photosensitive emulsion. Wavelengths encode multiple states per data region; current spectroscopic technology makes 400 states per 2 micron diameter data region feasible. Multi-state data architecture within each domain enhances data integrity, error-checking, and accelerates writing and reading for the entire media module.

Design and Implementation of Refresh and Timing Controller Unit for LPDDR2 Memory Controller

this paper presents a “Implementation of “Refresh And Timing Controller” unit for low power double data rate 2 memory controller (LPDDR2 MEMORY CONTROLLER). “Refresh and Timing Controller” unit plays a vital role for LPDDR2 memory controller .It maintains different timing parameters to handle various commands for memory like refresh, read and write operations and also performs Memory Initialization. Since it is low power DDR2 the maximum duration in power-down mode and deep power down mode is maintained by “Refresh and Timing Controller” unit. The refresh rate period is programmable using the Refresh Period Register. It supports “All Bank Refresh”. The unit has timers to accommodate Refresh, Read/Write, and Power down modes. The RTL is done using the System Verilog. The design is simulated

Chevron Position Qualification System for Development of Emergency Response Leadership

ABSTRACT The 2010 Deepwater Horizon incident raised the awareness of the potential scale, complexity and duration of oil spill events, highlighting the need for emergency response organizations to develop and maintain advanced levels of capability and readiness. Such capability and readiness requires teams of experienced and trained personnel who ideally can be cascaded throughout an enterprise to fill Incident Command System (ICS) positions in coordination with outside organizations. Experience gained through either responses to real- world events or carefully crafted simulation exercises is critical to the development and maintenance of response team capability, and providing such can present a significant challenge for team coordinators. Chevron Corporate Emergency Response developed and tested a qualification program aimed at providing consistency and structure to the training and experiential development of Chevron's corporate emergency response personnel. The Chevron Position Qualification System (CPQS) program establishes a minimum level of training and observed demonstrated competencies for leadership positions within the ICS structure. Twenty-one position-specific workbooks detail training, readiness and competency metrics for internal certification through the program. CPQS draws from different established agency programs and is consistent with ICS training curriculum. The program is tailored to fit the roles filled by Chevron Corporate Emergency Response Team members. Members of Chevron's Corporate Emergency Response Teams have a baseline of professional training that supports and sustains a corporate culture of safety, operational discipline and environmental, safety risk and hazard awareness. The CPQS program was built upon the premise that participants have this foundational training, capability and professionalism. The CPQS program builds upon this foundation, expanding the professional competency of response personnel through a standardized program. The CPQS program establishes minimum ICS and function-specific courses along with recommended training and the demonstration of specified skills and abilities in either real-world or exercise environments. Qualified and vetted approvers, known within the program a Qualified Approvers, provide consistent verification of the demonstration of skills and capabilities identified for each position. Additionally, these expert observers provide commentary on areas where skills or professional expertise can be improved. The goal of CPQS is to enable a mobile and versatile workforce that can respond worldwide and integrate into response organizations around the globe. Skills gained through the completion of CPQS requirements enable business units to transfer personnel into key response positions across the enterprise to carry out responses to more complex events. Common training and exercising goals allow organizations to gain efficiencies and build progressive experience and expertise-building opportunities through shared professional development resources. Periodic refresher training and ongoing participation in response exercises or actual incidents are also required to maintain the certification. The CPQS program is currently used by Chevron's Corporate Emergency Response Teams and was field tested at a three-day response exercise in Trieste, Italy where responders from relevant functional groups completed training and demonstrated response capabilities and ICS skills. CPQS is also being utilized with the Chevron regional response team in the Gulf of Mexico with an initial implementation at a training and exercise event in Covington, Louisiana, USA.

The Influences of Drivers/Riders in Road Traffic Crashes in Ghana between 2001 and 2011

The road traffic accident (RTA) is a global misfortune and the leading cause of death among young drivers. In safeguarding and developing innovative safety strategies to curtail the situation, the factors causing this menace needs proper attention and investigation. The objective of this study is to identify the potential factors responsible for causing a traffic accident in Ghana. In studying these factors extensively, a descriptive study with quantitative technique was employed. Analyses used data between 2001 and 2011 obtained from the Building and Road Research Institute (BRRI) with specific focus on the age, drinking, vehicle defect, driver/rider error, injury, road surface type and weather. A total of 200,528 cases of drivers/riders were analysed and discovered that, people with younger age (21-40) contribute 62.97% of total crashes. Crashes reduce steadily as drivers/riders age increases. Also, the vehicle defect analysis shows that 87.46% of accidents cannot be linked to the fault of the vehicle before incidence, while the majority (75.38%) of drivers/riders had no injury during a traffic accident. Higher number of fatalities are recorded on tar good roads (81.57%) and clear weather (91.75%). The fight against this canker by the authorities must consider periodic refresher courses for younger drivers/riders on traffic law to bring to bear the adherence of good driving/riding principles and attitudes to ensure that safety is guaranteed for all road users in the country.

Replica Technique for Adaptive Refresh Timing of Gain-Cell-Embedded DRAM

Gain cells have recently been shown to be a viable alternative to static random access memory in low-power applications due to their low leakage currents and high density. The primary component of power consumption in these arrays is the dynamic power consumed during periodic refresh operations. Refresh timing is traditionally set according to a worst-case evaluation of retention time under extreme process variations, and worst-case access statistics, leading to frequent power-hungry refresh cycles. In this brief we present a replica technique for automatically tracking the retention time of a gain-cell-embedded dynamic-random-access-memory macrocell according to process variations and operating statistics, thereby reducing the data retention power of the array. A 2-kb array was designed and fabricated in a mature 0.18-μm CMOS process, appropriate for integration in ultralow power applications, such as biomedical sensors. Measurements show efficient retention time tracking across a range of supply voltages and access statistics, lowering the refresh frequency by more than 5×, as compared with traditional worst-case design.

Refresh pausing in DRAM memory systems

Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM) cells rely on periodic refresh operations to maintain data integrity. As the capacity of DRAM memories has increased, so has the amount of time consumed in doing refresh. Refresh operations contend with read operations, which increases read latency and reduces system performance. We show that eliminating latency penalty due to refresh can improve average performance by 7.2%. However, simply doing intelligent scheduling of refresh operations is ineffective at obtaining significant performance improvement. This article provides an alternative and scalable option to reduce the latency penalty due to refresh. It exploits the property that each refresh operation in a typical DRAM device internally refreshes multiple DRAM rows in JEDEC-based distributed refresh mode. Therefore, a refresh operation has well-defined points at which it can potentially be Paused to service a pending read request. Leveraging this property, we propose Refresh Pausing , a solution that is highly effective at alleviating the contention from refresh operations. It provides an average performance improvement of 5.1% for 8Gb devices and becomes even more effective for future high-density technologies. We also show that Refresh Pausing significantly outperforms the recently proposed Elastic Refresh scheme.