I'm surprised learning this too. I know the hobby embedded, and HTTP-server OSS ecosystem have committed to Async, but I didn't expect Oxide would.
I'm surprised learning this too. I know the hobby embedded, and HTTP-server OSS ecosystem have committed to Async, but I didn't expect Oxide would.
We actually don't use Rust async in the embedded parts of our system. This is largely because our firmware is based on a multi-tasking microkernel operating system, Hubris[1], and we can express concurrency at the level of the OS scheduler. Although our service processors are single-core systems, we can still rely on the OS to schedule multiple threads of execution.
Rust async is, however, very useful in single-core embedded systems that don't have an operating system with preemptive multitasking, where one thread of execution is all you ever get. It's nice to have a way to express that you might be doing multiple things concurrently in an event-driven way without having to have an OS to manage preemptive multitasking.
[1] https://hubris.oxide.computer/
Heh, this is super interesting to hear. Single threaded async/concurrent code is so fun and interesting to see. I’ve ran some tokio programs in single threaded mode just to see it in action