The Modern Memory Testing Arsenal -- A Complete Guide to Benchmarking Tools for Next-Gen Memory Systems
Introduction
Memory systems are evolving rapidly. From traditional DDR DRAM to high-bandwidth memory (HBM), persistent memory (PMEM), and the emerging Compute Express Link (CXL) technology, today's systems feature complex heterogeneous memory hierarchies that demand sophisticated evaluation approaches.
This comprehensive guide surveys the cutting-edge tools and methodologies available for testing, benchmarking, and profiling modern memory systems. Whether you're a hardware architect designing next-generation memory controllers, a software developer optimizing applications for heterogeneous memory, or a researcher exploring memory system co-design, this survey provides a roadmap to the essential tools shaping memory system evaluation from 2018 to 2025.
We cover everything from synthetic workload generators that can clone application memory behavior, to trace replay frameworks that enable reproducible testing, specialized benchmark suites for emerging technologies, and profiling tools that provide deep insights into memory performance bottlenecks. The landscape has evolved from simple bandwidth and latency measurements to sophisticated AI-driven workload synthesis and unified frameworks that span multiple memory technologies.