stress-ng vs TestMem5

stress-ng is a free utility for loading computer subsystems and operating system kernel interfaces with stress tests. Its project lists more than 390 tests, including suites for CPU, virtual memory, filesystems, and memory or CPU caches. CPU tests exercise floating-point, integer, bit-manipulation, and control-flow operations. Listed architecture coverage includes ARM, x86-64, RISC-V, MIPS, Power, SPARC, and s390x. The project originally aimed to reveal hardware problems such as thermal overruns and operating system bugs under heavy load. stress-ng can report test throughput to help observe performance changes between operating system releases or hardware types, but the project says it is not a precise benchmark suite. Some tests may heat poorly designed hardware or create excessive system thrashing that is hard to stop. On Linux, running as root adjusts out-of-memory settings so stressors can become unkillable in low-memory conditions; the README advises careful use. The project documents Docker snapshots and installation on recent Ubuntu releases through its PPA. It is licensed under GPL-2.0 and costs nothing.

TestMem5 has no write-up on Specifiction yet; its figures are above.