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Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

android.googlesource.com

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Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#31

Post by fouric »

jmull wrote: post #22

It seems like Rust is really catching on. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to it for a while -- it felt like it might have simply been that day's "flavor of the day", destined to sink once then next flavor became popular. Now, there's a real problem to be solved. But I thought a simpler approach would be needed (e.g., Zig or something like it). I guess that may still happen, but seems more and more like Rust…

I suspect that Zig will still end up eclipsing Rust - not because it's a "more powerful" language, but because it's much easier to learn. Lower barriers of entry seem to matter more than mere "power" - see Common Lisp's multi-decade feature lead being ignored, and Python leapfrogging other more capable languages (Common Lisp) or equally capable ones that came first (Ruby) due to ease-of-use.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#32

Post by f6v »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

Any insight into why Apple seems to have a much better bluetooth stack? I do a lot of BLE development that has to work cross platform, and we see constant GATT connection issues on android compared to almost none on ios.

A wild guess: less hardware variability.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#33

Post by Nextgrid »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

Any insight into why Apple seems to have a much better bluetooth stack? I do a lot of BLE development that has to work cross platform, and we see constant GATT connection issues on android compared to almost none on ios.

Could it be because they only have a handful of hardware variants to support, vs hundreds on Android? Presumably, the stack itself is somewhat sane on both sides, but the hardware's bugs, poorly specified or undefined behavior is constantly throwing wrenches in the machinery - Apple managed to fix most of them for the hardware they support, but Android has no chance as they have to support hundreds of different chips.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#34

Post by SketchySeaBeast »

akersten wrote: post #18

This is great news. Hopefully it fixes a lot of the jank that I've always experienced with Android Bluetooth. I don't think I've ever had a smooth experience - even with a supposedly flagship device (Pixel 4a!) I've encountered all of the following problems: * Devices getting stuck at max volume (thankfully not headphones) * Devices getting stuck at really low volumes * Devices randomly switching between absolute vol…

That's bizarre. I have a Samsung phone with Samsung Bluetooth earbuds and I've only ever experienced a single connection issue in the whole year I've owned them and they are a daily driver for me. I wonder what the difference is.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#35

Post by trollied »

jmull wrote: post #22

It seems like Rust is really catching on. To be honest, I didn't pay much attention to it for a while -- it felt like it might have simply been that day's "flavor of the day", destined to sink once then next flavor became popular. Now, there's a real problem to be solved. But I thought a simpler approach would be needed (e.g., Zig or something like it). I guess that may still happen, but seems more and more like Rust…

I don't really consider the popularity of a thing on HN as a good measure of its real-world popularity.

Take a look at the GitHub Octoverse https://octoverse.github.com/

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#36

Post by kevincox »

parwan98 wrote: post #10
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

> fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code Correction: god-awful host side bluetooth code. There is still the bluetooth firmware residing on the BCMxxx chip (or Qualcomm chip) - >1MB of god-awfulerer closed-source code, half of it is in ROM (with limited number of available patch slots), full of bugs. You can see it crash from time to time in the kernel debug logs (and auto-restart itself)

Do you have any more info about ROM patch slots? I have never heard of this before. I assume this is a small amount of r/w memory that is somehow overlaid over specific locations in the ROM?

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#37

Post by mondoshawan »

parwan98 wrote: post #10
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

> fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code Correction: god-awful host side bluetooth code. There is still the bluetooth firmware residing on the BCMxxx chip (or Qualcomm chip) - >1MB of god-awfulerer closed-source code, half of it is in ROM (with limited number of available patch slots), full of bugs. You can see it crash from time to time in the kernel debug logs (and auto-restart itself)

On Glass, we actually went to Broadcom and had them on the ropes for fixing parts of their firmware. Sadly, we couldn't bring those fixes out of the closed source world of hardware, so it's still up to the system integrator to fight those battles...

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#38

Post by mondoshawan »

dukoid wrote: post #7
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

I really hope it will fare better than NewBlue and BlueDroid... https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/14/the-rise-and-fall-o...

Bluedroid is the old stack. Zach and co started the floride project to clean it up, but it seems GD is their attempt to totally rewrite it.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#39

Post by kevincox »

akersten wrote: post #18

This is great news. Hopefully it fixes a lot of the jank that I've always experienced with Android Bluetooth. I don't think I've ever had a smooth experience - even with a supposedly flagship device (Pixel 4a!) I've encountered all of the following problems: * Devices getting stuck at max volume (thankfully not headphones) * Devices getting stuck at really low volumes * Devices randomly switching between absolute vol…

Wow, that's awful. I've had a large number of Pixel phones and bluetooth has been basically flawless (other than an old Pixel 1 where I think the hardware actually failed). I guess I have been lucky with the devices I used with the phones.

Re: Android's new Bluetooth stack rewrite (Gabeldorsh) is written with Rust

#40

Post by mondoshawan »

seanalltogether wrote: post #28
mondoshawan wrote: post #2

I know the guy that heads up the team that did this work -- he and I spent 2+ years fighting Broadcom's old, god-awful bluetooth code. Our whole team used to play what-if games about replacing the thing while massive code dumps came in from vendors, making the task ever larger. Zach, if you're reading this, HUGE kudos to holding the line in replacing that, and double kudos for doing it in a verifiable, sane language!

Any insight into why Apple seems to have a much better bluetooth stack? I do a lot of BLE development that has to work cross platform, and we see constant GATT connection issues on android compared to almost none on ios.

Apple has a unique relationship to its hardware, and the money to bend vendor's firmware to their will. Half of the problem with Bluetooth is the host stack. The other half is the firmware running on the controller on the other side of HCI. If the controller ever gets screwed up, the host stack can only disconnect from HCI and totally restart the controller.
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