The Symbiosis of Rust and Arm: A Conversation with David Wood
19 days ago
- #Embedded
- #Rust
- #Arm
- David Wood is the Rust Team Lead at Arm and Rust Compiler Team Co-Lead, focusing on Rust-Arm compatibility.
- Arm designs processor architectures (ARM/ARM64) and licenses them to partners for various applications, from smartphones to data centers.
- Arm's processors are known for power efficiency, with over 325 billion devices worldwide using Arm technology.
- David's team ensures Rust fully supports Arm hardware, enabling features like scalable vectors for performance improvements.
- Arm is investing more in Rust, particularly in embedded domains like automotive, IoT, and robotics.
- Scalable vectors in Arm architecture allow length-agnostic operations, improving performance without rewriting code for new hardware.
- David discusses ongoing work to extend Rust's type system to support scalable vectors, a multi-year project.
- Rust compile times are a focus for improvement, with efforts on incremental compilation and parallelization.
- Advice for aspiring contributors: Start small, engage with the Rust community, and focus on areas like diagnostics or performance.
- Arm collaborates with partners like Ferrous Systems and Google on Rust projects, including firmware rewrites.