{"id":21750,"date":"2019-04-19T12:33:02","date_gmt":"2019-04-19T12:33:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.dmcinfo.com\/blog\/21750\/oxidizing-bare-metal-rust-programming-for-arm-microcontrollers-4\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T10:21:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T15:21:10","slug":"oxidizing-bare-metal-rust-programming-for-arm-microcontrollers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dmcinfo.com\/blog\/21750\/oxidizing-bare-metal-rust-programming-for-arm-microcontrollers\/","title":{"rendered":"Oxidizing Bare Metal: Rust Programming for ARM Microcontrollers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Being an embedded systems developer<\/a> is always an exciting challenge. One of the downsides though is that in general, programming and development tools are somewhat limited. Developers are almost always restricted to C\/C++ and often can’t rely on more extensive open source libraries. However, recently there have been many efforts to expand high-level language support to ARM-based bare metal targets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Projects using MicroPython and JerryScript attempt to provide a means to write Python and JavaScript code and provide frameworks for \u201ccompiling\u201d and running scripts on a variety of bare-metal targets. However, these types of frameworks have some inherent drawbacks. JavaScript and Python are both interpreted languages with garbage collection and weak typing. Running these languages requires relying on a run time or more complex cross compiler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A New Language for Embedded Systems<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More recently, Rust has emerged as an appealing language for applications that require memory safety and efficiency<\/strong>. Both of these features are often critical for embedded devices. Manual memory management often creates bugs which are hard to isolate and are not always easily remedied due to the resource constraints of embedded devices.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Additionally, C\/C++, even given all of its faults, remains a highly efficient language due to the control it provides developers and because it can use many target-specific optimizations at compile time. C\/C++ sets a high benchmark for speed that is difficult for interpreted languages to match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rust, fortunately, solves both problems in ways that are particularly well suited to microcontrollers<\/a>. Rust does not require any run-time engine for garbage collection or memory management. Rust instead chooses to enforce memory safety at compile time. Furthermore, because Rust compiles to LLVM, target optimizations rivaling those achievable with C\/C++ are possible. Recently, the Rust core team has made support for new target architectures a priority, and there are already many open source projects aimed at expanding support for embedded devices in Rust.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"Nucleo PCB Running on Rust<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting Started with Rust<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The Embedded Rust Book<\/a> provides many details regarding getting started with Rust on embedded devices. For this blog, I\u2019ll highlight a few key components that make up the Rust embedded landscape. Specifically, I\u2019ll be discussing support for ARM Cortex M based microcontrollers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Rust ecosystem is built on an extensive library of packages called \u201cCrates.\u201d A few specific crates, \u201ccortex-m\u201d and \u201ccortex-m-rt\u201d, make up the core support for ARM targets. These packages provide the bare minimum of code to get a basic program up and running. It allows access and control of the core ARM registers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is an example of setting up the systick peripheral taken from the Rust Embedded Book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rust<\/span><\/span>