The Pragmatism of Hubris
Cliff Biffle, principal engineer at Oxide Computer Company, explains the origins of Hubris, an embedded operating system designed for Oxide's rack-scale computers, drawing on his prior experience with Project Loon at Google. The team evaluated existing options like Tock and QNX but chose to build Hubris in Rust to ensure memory safety and value alignment, leveraging a software-hardware co-design approach to bypass the risks of secure FPGAs. Key technical decisions include using a minimal kernel, self-describing build archives, and advanced debugging tools like Humility to manage complex embedded systems without dynamic loading or self-hosting constraints.