Benchmarking a #![no_std] Microcontroller

[dkhayes117]

I have never run any benchmarking tests before, let alone in a #![no_std] implementation. I'm implementing some security features and I want to run a prime based algorithm with security features on and with them off. That way I can determine the performance hit of using security measures. I found a primes crate, but I was a little concerned with the following line

let mut pset = Sieve::new();

which makes me think this uses heap. My project does not have an allocator so I can't use heap. Does anyone have any suggestions and/or experience?

[steffahn]

@dkhayes117

I found a primes crate, but I was a little concerned with the following line

let mut pset = Sieve::new();

which makes me think this uses heap.

There’s this very straightforward way of telling that the heap is used by a type: On the docs page of Sieve, you press the little “[src]” button in the top right corner, and you’ll see that indeed, the Sieve contains a Vec. No need to guess here, it clearly uses the heap. Moreover the crate doesn’t even support no-std.

[steffahn]

So after a bit of digging, I’m having a hard time finding a crate for primes that works without allocations. I’ve come across num-primes which at least supports no-std, but relies on the alloc crate being used instead. I’m personally not experienced with Rust on microcontrollers and I don’t know how common/realistic it is to use alloc with a custom global allocator there.

[Phlopsi]

Would it be possible to add a simple global allocator by using something akin to

static HEAP: [u8; 1024] = [u8; 0];

?

[dkhayes117]

I found the num_primes crate too after your first post. What about using the heapless crate for data structures on the stack?

[dkhayes117]

The heapless crate will work I believe, but I really don't need to be able to change the max number for what I'm doing. I can just used a fixed sized mutable array.

Rust Playground

fn main() {

    let mut primes: [usize;3001] = [0;3001];

    for i in 2..=primes.len()-1 {
        primes[i] = i;
    }

    for i in 0..primes.len() {
        let factor = primes[i];
        if factor != 0 {
            sieve(&mut primes, factor);
        }
    }

    for i in 0..primes.len() {
        if primes[i] != 0 {
            println!("{}", primes[i])
        }
    }
}

fn sieve(primes: &mut [usize], factor: usize) {
    for i in 0..primes.len() {
        let value = primes[i];
        if value != 0 && value != factor {
            if value % factor == 0 {
                primes[i] = 0;
            }
        }
    }
}