Rust for RF embedded development
Engineering internship at NXP Semiconductors
- Period
- Mar – Sept 2023
- Status
- Completed
- Role
- RF embedded systems engineering intern
- Stack
Six months at NXP Semiconductors in Caen to answer a concrete question: is Rust ready for RF embedded development, and at what cost?
What I did
- HAL modules in Rust: cryptography and wired serial protocols, with test suites and documentation.
- A C vs Rust benchmarking framework to compare binary size, performance and ergonomics on the same use cases.
- An embedded logging tool for hardware targets, useful during the evaluation and reusable afterwards.
What I took away
Rust brings a lot in memory safety and expressiveness, at the price of an embedded ecosystem that was still young at the time. The benchmark made it possible to put numbers on the table rather than opinions.