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rust-embedded / wg

Coordination repository of the embedded devices Working Group
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[Question] Experience with cadence chips #683

Closed steckes closed 1 year ago

steckes commented 1 year ago

Hello! I am interested in building my rust program for the Cadence HiFi 4 Chip. https://www.cadence.com/en_US/home/tools/ip/tensilica-ip/hifi-dsps/hifi-4.html

As a newcomer to embedded it is difficult for me to find out if there is a possibility to build for this chip or if it is a very customized toolchain they are providing to clients. On their website the only thing I saw is, that they are using an Xtensa XTClang Compiler and I have seen the Rust Fork for Xtensa but it is only mentioning the ESP Processors and I don't know if they are related.

Has someone of you heard of those Cadence Chips and how high would you say are the chances to build rust for this chip and could I even use an embedded allocator?

Thank you so much, Stephan

jonathanpallant commented 1 year ago

SEGGER says the HiFi 4 is based on the Cadence Xtensa LX architecture. This isn't supported by the LLVM included with Rust, so you have to find an appropriate LLVM and build your own copy of Rust against it - like Espressif are doing. Perhaps you could use the Espressif version of rustc? Not sure - and even if it worked I don't know if they'd support it if that's not a core they ship themselves.

As you are a newcomer, I would note that this path is Extra-Hard-Mode Rust and it might be worth starting with better supported chips until you have a feel for using the toolchain.

steckes commented 1 year ago

Thank you!