RTIC: The Hardware Accelerated Rust RTOS

RTIC (Real-Time Interrupt-driven Concurrency) is a real-time operating system (RTOS) framework for Rust, focused on microcontroller and embedded systems programming. An RTOS manages tasks with strict timing requirements (e.g., a robot's motor controller or a car's brake sensor). RTIC is unusual because it uses Rust's ownership model and compile-time checks to guarantee task priority and memory safety without needing a traditional kernel scheduler — most scheduling decisions are made at compile time, not at runtime. This makes it "hardware accelerated": it relies on the microcontroller's built-in interrupt controller hardware rather than a software scheduler. The project is maintained by the RTIC community and contributors from companies like ARMT and Ferrous Systems. For Rust developers doing embedded work, RTIC is significant because it offers a safer, lower-overhead alternative to traditional C-based RTOSes such as FreeRTOS or Zephyr.