Aspects of the disclosed technology relate to techniques for corrupting memories in emulation. After a power domain in a circuit design being emulated in an emulator is powered down, a main memory model for a memory in the power domain is corrupted and a cache memory model for the memory is invalidated. The cache memory model is a hardware model in the emulator and the main memory model is a software model in a workstation coupled to the emulator. The cache memory model stores a subset of data that are stored in the main memory model. The combination of the main memory model and the cache memory model is used to model the memory.