A system and method synchronizes heterogeneous agents in a computer system with a software synchronization mechanism. Agents of the computer system connected to a common memory, including agents lacking a hardware synchronization system, can be synchronized with the software synchronization mechanism. The synchronized agents can cause collisions on the same cache line in order to stress test the memory of the system. Each agent updates a first array to indicate it has arrived at the synchronization. After all the agents have arrived, each agent then updates a second array to announce its exit.