Safe and Secure Drivers in High-Level Languages

Explore the development of safe and secure PCIe drivers using high-level programming languages in this comprehensive conference talk from the 35th Chaos Communication Congress. Discover how to write low-level drivers for PCIe devices in Rust, Go, C#, Swift, Haskell, and OCaml, focusing on user space network drivers for Intel 82599ES 10 Gbit/s NICs. Learn about the benefits of using modern programming languages for driver development, including improved safety, security, and system stability. Examine the three-step approach to building better drivers: using safer programming languages, isolating drivers in user space, and utilizing IOMMU for hardware isolation. Compare performance benchmarks across different language implementations and gain insights into the impact of garbage collection on packet forwarding latency. Get inspired to write your own drivers in your preferred programming language and demystify the process of driver development.