Memtest86+ v9.00: ARM64 Support and USB reports

Memtest86+ v9.00 has been released, and its developers describe it as the most significant update since the complete rewrite of the program in version 6. The main highlights are support for the ARM64 architecture, the ability to save a report to a USB drive, and redesigned testing algorithms.

The program now runs on AArch64 (ARM64) processors. It has been verified on Snapdragon X and on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5 single-board computers. Support for the new Wildcat Lake platform has also been added. In addition, the final report can be saved to a USB drive formatted with FAT32, for which support for USB mass storage devices has been implemented.

The test suite has been considerably expanded and modernized. The new structure makes it possible to find the first error faster. Tests using 128-bit and 256-bit SIMD vector instructions (SSE2, AVX2, NEON, LASX) have been introduced; on LoongArch, a LASX-based test now replaces the scalar fallback path. There is a new bus stress test, designed primarily for DDR5 memory but useful for any type of RAM. The RowHammer test (test 11) has also been added, and it is disabled by default. The bit fade test has been improved and now takes adjacent cells into account.

Diagnostic tools and hardware information have been improved. On startup, the program checks the checksum and CRC of the SPD data to detect corrupted records. If SPD is unavailable, memory module details are taken from DMI tables. More than 100 new DRAM manufacturers are now recognized. Also added are an ECC polling option, temperature adjustments for AMD EPYC processors (including a fix to how their readings are displayed), and an .osrel section in the binary.

Automation has been improved too, thanks to a machine-readable log output over the serial port (the log boot option). Management of auxiliary processor stacks has been hardened, the double handling of key presses has been fixed, and many other issues found during beta testing have been resolved. The build is signed for Secure Boot by the developers’ own certificate authority, and a Microsoft signature is expected to follow. Please note that this version is still a preliminary release and has not yet appeared on the project’s official website.