Runtime

This page, which is horribly incomplete, should evolve into a guide to creating new targets.

Reactor Runtime

A reactor runtime must implement the following things:

• …

Targets

Accessors (ES5)

• Has a working runtime; semantics are slightly different from reactors

Wirewrap (ES6 + Flow)

• Currently under development

C

• Old, unsafe language
• Good compiler support (RISC-V, Patmos)
• WCET analysis for Patmos
• No runtime yet

Rust

• Safe system level language
• No compiler for FlexPRET or Patmos
  • There might be some work going on for RISC-V: https://abopen.com/news/rust-comes-risc-v/
• No WCET analysis
  • Actor library: https://github.com/actix/actix
  • DSL in Rust: https://doc.rust-lang.org/rust-by-example/macros/dsl.html
  • No runtime yet

Rust is LLVM based. Can we use the Rust frontend and our LLVM backend? We briefly explored it with the Patmos LLVM port, but Rust libraries are called. This may be a several PM project (e.g., a master thesis).

Rust/Tock discussion with Pat

• To get a small kernel, exclude std library with a switch and manually import from core what is needed
• Use nightly build from Rust to get latest support
• Brad is working on Rust for RISC-V, which we should be able to use
• Working on getting https://www.tockos.org/ running on RISC-V
• Tock OS (kernel) is single threaded with yield(), but applications are running in individual threads
• Rust embedded group (IRC available)
• Tock has a public Slack channel

Notes on JavaScript

• Node.js can run within Rust (but requires IPC)
• Rust can also be compiled to WebAssembly (supported by JS interpreters)
• This can be explored for mixed critical, more dynamic systems

Ray (Python)