Study compares Rust and C languages for embedded firmware development

There’s a lot of hype around the Rust programming language, and I’m seeing it being adopted by various projects, not least the Linux kernel. However, so far it was unclear to me whether it was suitable for embedded firmware development since the hardware resources are limited on microcontrollers. A low memory and storage footprint is required, and optimal performance may also be important, for example, to lower the power consumption of battery-powered devices. A Cornell Universty’s study entitled “Lessons from an Industrial Microcontroller Use Case with Ariel OS” attempts to answer this question using embedded C and Rust, and the conclusion is that Rust is a viable option: As Rust gains traction for developing safer systems software, a reality check for the microcontroller hardware segment becomes necessary. How ready is the Rust ecosystem for this segment? Can Rust compete with C in practice? This paper reports on an IoT industrial […]

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