Make Rust Faster Than C: workplan

Supporters & funders

Tweede golf

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Support
  • In 2024: support for zlib-rs, part of our data-compression initiative. Tweede golf provided in-kind support for the bulk of the development of zlib-rs.
  • In 2024, 2025, 2026: support for sudo-rs, part of our privilege-boundary initiative. Tweede golf provides in-kind support for maintenance.
  • In 2023: support for statime, part of our time-synchronization initiative.

NLnet Foundation

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Support
  • In 2024, 2025: support for sudo-rs, part of our privilege-boundary initiative.
  • In 2024, 2025: support for bzip2-rs, part of our data-compression initiative.
  • In 2025: support for our codegen initiative.
  • In 2023, 2025, 2026: support for ntpd-rs, part of our time-synchronization initiative.
  • In 2021, 2022, 2023: support for statime, part of our time-synchronization initiative.

NGI Zero Core

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Support
  • In 2025: support for bzip2-rs, part of our data-compression initiative.
  • In 2024, 2025: support for sudo-rs, part of our privilege-boundary initiative.
  • In 2025, 2026: support for ntpd-rs, part of our time-synchronization initiative.
  • In 2026: support for allowd, part of our privilege-boundary initiative.

AWS

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Support
  • In 2022, 2023: support for ntpd-rs, part of our time-synchronization initiative. AWS co-funded the first version of ntpd-rs through Prossimo.
  • In 2023: support for sudo-rs, part of our privilege-boundary initiative. AWS co-funded the development of sudo-rs through Prossimo.
  • In 2025: support for our codegen initiative.

Work plan

Milestone 1: State machine codegen

  • Improve RFC 3720 (improved state machines)
  • Identify key rust projects that benefit from #[loop_match]
  • Add experimental support for #[loop_match] to c2rust
  • Evaluate the improvement by comparing the performance of a freshly translated bzip2 using either the original or patched c2rust

Timeline: Nov 2024 - Jun 2026 Status: In progress. Kindly funded by NLnet Foundation.

Milestone 3: Tail calls

Guaranteed tail calls and computed goto are techniques used in systems programming to squeeze out the last bit of performance.

  • Improve support for guaranteed tail calls
  • Add “computed goto” codegen to loop_match
  • Improve the loop_match implementation in rustc_codegen_ssa

For more details see the 2026 Rust Project Goal "Explicit tail calls & loop_match".

Timeline: April 2026 - Dec 2026
Status: Needs funding.

Please get in touch with us, if you are interested in financially supporting our effort.

Completed milestones

Milestone 2: Identify performance bottlenecks

  • Complete the improved state machine codegen Rust project goal
  • Merge the #[loop_match] language experiment
  • Research the performance challenges in key projects (e.g. rav1d, ripgrep, bzip-rs, zlib-rs, brotli-decompressor)
  • Talk to the maintainers of these key project to pinpoint bottlenecks, and to rust team members to find and help document improvements to the backend
  • Use c2rust to find small code samples where clang generates better assembly than rustc for (effectively) equivalent input
  • Document current cases where rustc generates suboptimal code, or fix the issues, if these are straightforward

Timeline: Apr 2025 - Dec 2025
Status: Completed. Kindly funded by AWS.


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