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Go on Embedded Systems and WebAssembly

https://tinygo.org/

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TinyGo - A Go Compiler For Small Places Get Started See the code Go on embedded systems and WebAssembly TinyGo brings the Go programming language to embedded systems and to the modern web by creating a new compiler based on LLVM. You can compile and run TinyGo programs on over 100 different microcontroller boards from maker boards such as the BBC micro:bit and the Arduino Uno, to industrial processors from Nordic Semiconductor and ST Microelectronics.

TinyGo
Apr 3 at 4:57pmWeb
Show threadnasretdinovApr 3

Tinygo made a lot of progress over the years -- e.g. they've recently introduced macOS support!

It does indeed produce much smaller binaries, including for macOS.

yuriy@MacBookAir ~/t/tinygo> time tinygo build -o test-tiny main.go

________________________________________________________
Executed in 1.06 secs fish external
usr time 1.18 secs 0.31 millis 1.18 secs
sys time 0.18 secs 1.50 millis 0.18 secs

yuriy@MacBookAir ~/t/tinygo> time go build -o test-normal main.go

________________________________________________________
Executed in 75.79 millis fish external
usr time 64.06 millis 0.41 millis 63.64 millis
sys time 96.76 millis 1.75 millis 95.01 millis

yuriy@MacBookAir ~/t/tinygo> ll
total 5096
-rw-r--r--@ 1 yuriy staff 74B 3 Apr 19:17 main.go
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 yuriy staff 2.3M 3 Apr 19:18 test-normal*
-rwxr-xr-x@ 1 yuriy staff 192K 3 Apr 19:18 test-tiny*
yuriy@MacBookAir ~/t/tinygo> cat main.go
package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
fmt.Printf("Hello world!\n")
}

Show threadtatjamApr 3
Writing embedded code with an async-aware programming language is wonderful (see Rust's embassy), but wonder how competitive this is when you need to push large quantities of data through a micro controller, I presume this is not suitable for real-time stuff?
Show threadnasretdinovApr 3
You can disable GC in tinygo, so if you allocate all the necessary buffers beforehand it can have good performance with real-time characteristics. If you _need_ dynamic memory allocation then no, because you need GC it can't provide realtime guarantees.
Show threadGroxxApr 3

Doesn't seem like those should be mutually exclusive, though the habits involved are quite opposing and I can definitely believe they're uncommon.

E.g. GC doesn't need to be precise. You could reserve CPU budget for GC, and only use that much at a time before yielding control. As long as you still free enough to not OOM, you're fine.

Show threadcarverautoApr 3

We're streaming RSTP camera feeds through WASM plugins and host-bridge adapters, no problem. I was surprised how well it worked TBH.

https://code.carverauto.dev/carverauto/serviceradar/src/bran...

Show threadclktmrApr 3
I've written a fair amount of code for EmbeddedGo. Garbage Collector is not an issue if you avoid heap allocations in your main loop. But if you're CPU bound a goroutine might block others from running for quite some time. If your platform supports async preemption, you might be able to patch the goroutine scheduler with realtime capabilities.
Show threadrandusernameApr 3

Can you elaborate on this and how it would be different from signaling on interrupts and DMA?

Hardware-level async makes sense to me. I can scope it. I can read the data sheet.

Software async in contrast seems difficult to characterize and reason about so I've been intimidated.

Show threadcarverautoApr 3
We're using TinyGo and the Wazero runtime for our WASM plugin system in ServiceRadar, highly recommend both if you're using golang.
Show threadevacchiApr 3
Yay wazero maintainer here, thanks for the shout-out!
Show threadpancstaApr 3
It was good to meet at wasm.io!
Show threadapitmanApr 3
Wazero is awesome. For anyone wanting to embed in languages other than Go, check out Extism.
Show threadmi_lkApr 3
What are the tradeoffs compared to standard Go?
Show threadjrockwayApr 3

It gets better every release, but there are missing language features:

https://tinygo.org/docs/reference/lang-support/

And parts of the stdlib that don't work:

https://tinygo.org/docs/reference/lang-support/stdlib/

Go language features

Which Go language features are supported by TinyGo and which are still a work in progress.

TinyGo
Show threadpancstaApr 3

TinyGo doesnt have networking in WASI[0] and the WASM websocket module[1] was last updated 5 years ago. Go without stdlib is not Go.

[0] https://github.com/tinygo-org/tinygo/issues/4880

[1] https://github.com/Nerzal/tinywebsocket