Rust programming language in the high-performance computing environment

Abstract

Fortran and C++ have traditionally been the languages of choice for high-performance computing (HPC) applications. However, they are both over 35 years old, and do not offer much in terms of user-friendliness or memory safety. Rust is an emergent new systems language, aiming to be performant while offering such safety and usability, as well as bundling tools that a modern developer needs. We compare multiple implementations of a finite difference stencil code, and show that idiomatically written Rust programs can be just as performant as their Fortran or C++ counterparts, while offering the above-mentioned advantages.