Revisiting MemGuard Overhead: A Reproduction Report

2026-09-03

AI Summary

本文重新评估了MemGuard在内存带宽调节中的开销，通过使用优化配置和新版本的MemGuard，发现其实际执行开销显著降低，与MemPol相近。

Abstract

As an increasing number of embedded platforms incorporate multiple processing units, shared resource contention induced unpredictable execution time poses a challenge for real-time system design. Memory bandwidth regulation is a popular mitigation approach, and MemGuard is the canonical example. Recently, MemPol introduced a new bandwidth regulation mechanism, which was compared with MemGuard. Specifically, they reported significant overheads for MemGuard, citing up to a 1.79x slowdown, to contextualize MemPol's comparative benefits. This report is meant to clarify and add the necessary nuance to the experiments carried out in that prior work. Specifically, we show that the MemGuard overheads presented in these prior evaluations were unintentionally amplified as the result of using a suboptimal configuration with an older version of MemGuard, wherein the benchmark under test was pinned directly to the master core responsible for handling global timer interrupts. By faithfully reproducing these specific experiments using a modern, decentralized implementation of MemGuard, we demonstrate that the actual execution overhead drops significantly under identical conditions. Consequently, when evaluated with a properly configured recent version, MemGuard exhibits an overhead that is highly comparable to MemPol's overhead. By revisiting these baseline metrics, this report provides an updated and comprehensive perspective required for future evaluations of memory bandwidth regulators.

Problem

• embedded platforms
• shared resource contention
• real-time system design
• memory bandwidth regulation
• MemGuard

Innovation

• MemGuard Overhead
• Reproduction Study
• Decentralized Implementation
• Memory Bandwidth Regulation