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Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

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Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#31

Post by pletnes »

atinchandel wrote: post #17

With my experience of working on +300 IoT projects - In majority IoT application edge computing is not required, devices generate very less data and perform simple computing or no computimg at all.In embedded usually it's better to keep things simple so that cost and bugs can be reduced. Most IoT application or solutions are usually not adopted due to hardware cost (capex) so keeping devices processing, memory and de…

I work on an image/video analysis type project. Internet connectivity is over (sometimes flaky) LTE. We could not live with a «thin device» unless we had a fiber link to the cloud.

Even if you do simple point measurements (e.g a weather station with temperature, pressure etc) it might make QA sense to perform multiple measurements and reject outliers, take an average etc before reporting to The Cloud.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#32

Post by josteink »

pjmlp wrote: post #29
mtgx wrote: post #27

Kudos to Microsoft for using Rust. It's a shame Google is attempting to write a new operating system (Fuchsia) almost from scratch right now, but is completely missing the opportunity to use Rust so it doesn't have to deal with decades of memory corruption bugs and other security-related bugs in the future.

At least some system parts are written in Go, like TCP/IP stack, file system mounting utilities and a few other drivers. Also thankfully they are at least making use of modern C++ instead of C. While not as safe as Rust, definitely better than plain C.

> Also thankfully they are at least making use of modern C++ instead of C. While not as safe as Rust, definitely better than plain C.

I see you're pointing a shotgun against your feet. Here, have this AR-15 with a safety-switch instead.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#33

Post by nielsole »

anonymousDan wrote: post #25
atinchandel wrote: post #17

With my experience of working on +300 IoT projects - In majority IoT application edge computing is not required, devices generate very less data and perform simple computing or no computimg at all.In embedded usually it's better to keep things simple so that cost and bugs can be reduced. Most IoT application or solutions are usually not adopted due to hardware cost (capex) so keeping devices processing, memory and de…

What if you have poor/intermittent backend connectivity, low latency requirements, or are handling sensitive data and don't want to ship it to a cloud backend? I think there can be a place for this model. Perhaps something like GDPR can make it more attractive? In the projects you have worked on, was the primary motivation maintainability or a business need to gather all data centrally in order to perform some kind o…

If I would design a service I would rather trust my cloud provider with an SSL connection in between, than a heterogeneous mix of servers that may be physically compromised (there are very few places that could house an "edge" at datacenter security standards).

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#34

Post by raggi »

mtgx wrote: post #27

Kudos to Microsoft for using Rust. It's a shame Google is attempting to write a new operating system (Fuchsia) almost from scratch right now, but is completely missing the opportunity to use Rust so it doesn't have to deal with decades of memory corruption bugs and other security-related bugs in the future.

We are writing a lot of things in Rust for Fuchsia. We are also incestung in Rust to get it to where it needs to be for such usage.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#35

Post by atonse »

walterbell wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #5

Update: Oops! confused it with Azure Sphere: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-sphere/ IoT Edge came out of a program in MS research where they determined that for an IoT device to be truly secure, it has to have a bunch of attributes, including layers of security from hardware to OS, automatic and cryptographically signed updates, etc. And then they set out to build it (and it runs a stripped down Linux kernel).…

Azure Sphere looks promising but the Microsoft $85 Linux dev board SDK requires a Windows 10 device with Visual Studio for development. Hopefully this is not another "Apple does it, so we can too" posture. If Sphere succeeds, many people will be happy to buy a network router that comes with 10 years of Microsoft Linux security updates. MS demo of BASIC on the Sphere cpu in an Altair: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP…

Link? Because that’s very surprising and out of character, especially for a new project.

Update: found link https://m.seeedstudio.com/productDetail/3052

Well that didn’t burst my bubble but definitely shrunk it quite a bit. Hopefully they’re building VS code plugins too.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#36

Post by dralley »

raggi wrote: post #34
mtgx wrote: post #27

Kudos to Microsoft for using Rust. It's a shame Google is attempting to write a new operating system (Fuchsia) almost from scratch right now, but is completely missing the opportunity to use Rust so it doesn't have to deal with decades of memory corruption bugs and other security-related bugs in the future.

We are writing a lot of things in Rust for Fuchsia. We are also incestung in Rust to get it to where it needs to be for such usage.

How does Fuschia compare to RedoxOS, apart from being further in development? Structurally speaking.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#37

Post by pjmlp »

josteink wrote: post #32
pjmlp wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least some system parts are written in Go, like TCP/IP stack, file system mounting utilities and a few other drivers. Also thankfully they are at least making use of modern C++ instead of C. While not as safe as Rust, definitely better than plain C.

> Also thankfully they are at least making use of modern C++ instead of C. While not as safe as Rust, definitely better than plain C. I see you're pointing a shotgun against your feet. Here, have this AR-15 with a safety-switch instead.

Agreed, but I also came to accept these things change quite slowly, when taking into account existing code, habits and beliefs.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#38

Post by atinchandel »

anonymousDan wrote: post #25
atinchandel wrote: post #17

With my experience of working on +300 IoT projects - In majority IoT application edge computing is not required, devices generate very less data and perform simple computing or no computimg at all.In embedded usually it's better to keep things simple so that cost and bugs can be reduced. Most IoT application or solutions are usually not adopted due to hardware cost (capex) so keeping devices processing, memory and de…

What if you have poor/intermittent backend connectivity, low latency requirements, or are handling sensitive data and don't want to ship it to a cloud backend? I think there can be a place for this model. Perhaps something like GDPR can make it more attractive? In the projects you have worked on, was the primary motivation maintainability or a business need to gather all data centrally in order to perform some kind o…

Dan I agree there is place for this model especially when you want to make local decisions or produce lot of data (e.g. video). In most of the projects we handled data required central aggregation.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#39

Post by darzu »

walterbell wrote: post #23
atonse wrote: post #5

Update: Oops! confused it with Azure Sphere: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/azure-sphere/ IoT Edge came out of a program in MS research where they determined that for an IoT device to be truly secure, it has to have a bunch of attributes, including layers of security from hardware to OS, automatic and cryptographically signed updates, etc. And then they set out to build it (and it runs a stripped down Linux kernel).…

Azure Sphere looks promising but the Microsoft $85 Linux dev board SDK requires a Windows 10 device with Visual Studio for development. Hopefully this is not another "Apple does it, so we can too" posture. If Sphere succeeds, many people will be happy to buy a network router that comes with 10 years of Microsoft Linux security updates. MS demo of BASIC on the Sphere cpu in an Altair: https://www.theregister.co.uk/AMP…

Azure Sphere dev here. Like any early project, we had to make many strategic choices on where to invest limited development time in. There are an endless number of features and platforms we'd love to support, but Visual Studio is an obvious first environment to target. I can't give you a timeline, but we're definitely investing in cross-platform tools.

I must admit I'm disappointed Seeed set such a high price for the dev kit, but there will be more boards in the future.

Re: Azure IoT Edge: Microsoft’s 60k LOC open source Rust code base

#40

Post by stmw »

mtgx wrote: post #27

Kudos to Microsoft for using Rust. It's a shame Google is attempting to write a new operating system (Fuchsia) almost from scratch right now, but is completely missing the opportunity to use Rust so it doesn't have to deal with decades of memory corruption bugs and other security-related bugs in the future.

Indeed, it's great to see Microsoft both using Rust and open sourcing some of the work. As a major user of Rust at our startup (aside: we're hiring Rust engineers), it's great to see it gaining mainstream momentum month-by-month.
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