tock/tock

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_license

Adoption not part of the score

6423 stars · 855 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-29, confidence not recorded

Tock is an embedded operating system for low-power, low-memory microcontrollers that runs multiple concurrent, mutually distrustful applications. Its kernel and drivers are written in Rust for compile-time memory safety, and it uses memory protection units to isolate applications from each other and from the kernel.

Use cases

• secure embedded operating system for microcontrollers
• run multiple isolated applications on a Cortex-M or RISC-V MCU
• build low-power IoT devices with third-party app support
• develop a memory-safe kernel in Rust for embedded hardware
• isolate untrusted firmware components on security-critical devices like TPMs or USB fobs
• battery-powered sensor network nodes that sleep at microamp currents
• wearable firmware that survives application crashes without human intervention

When to choose

• you need strong isolation between mutually distrustful applications on a microcontroller with an MPU
• you want a Rust-written kernel with compile-time memory and type safety for drivers and kernel components
• your device must run for months or years on a small battery with automatic low-power sleep
• you are building security-critical hardware such as TPMs or authentication fobs where a buggy app must not leak secrets
• you need preemptive scheduling where a crashing application cannot take down the whole system

When to avoid

• you target Linux-class hardware (application processors) where a full OS like Linux or Zephyr-style RTOSes fit better
• you need hard real-time guarantees with deterministic deadlines rather than event-driven multiprogramming
• your microcontroller lacks an MPU or is not Cortex-M or RISC-V based
• you want a simple bare-metal single-application firmware without process isolation
• you need a large ecosystem of off-the-shelf drivers and middleware comparable to mainstream RTOSes

Facets

application · maturity active

embedded security concurrency operating-systems embedded-systems iot security embedded iot rust embedded-os rtos microcontroller kernel memory-safety rust-kernel cortex-m risc-v multiprogramming low-power iot-security mpu-isolation scheduler arm

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