--- title: Accessing Hardware in Rust | daily.dev description: A deep dive into hardware access patterns in Rust for bare-metal embedded systems. Covers three hardware access mechanisms: I/O ports, system/co-processor... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/accessing-hardware-in-rust-i3uox0ypx twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Accessing Hardware in Rust | daily.dev og:description: A deep dive into hardware access patterns in Rust for bare-metal embedded systems. Covers three hardware access mechanisms: I/O ports, system/co-processor... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/accessing-hardware-in-rust-i3uox0ypx og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/i3uOx0ypX.png og:image:alt: Accessing Hardware in Rust og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Accessing Hardware in Rust **[Ferrous Systems](https://daily.dev/sources/ferroussystems)** · 31 min read · 2 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A deep dive into hardware access patterns in Rust for bare-metal embedded systems. Covers three hardware access mechanisms: I/O ports, system/co-processor registers, and memory-mapped I/O (MMIO). Explains why volatile writes are required for MMIO, why creating Rust references to MMIO addresses is unsound, and how bitfields within registers are typically handled. Compares four major Rust MMIO abstraction crates — svd2rust, tock-registers, safe-mmio, and derive-mmio — evaluating each on API ergonomics, documentation discoverability, soundness, and AArch64 hypervisor compatibility. Also highlights the importance of running cargo doc to validate the developer experience of generated documentation. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Practical Rust API Design](https://daily.dev/posts/practical-rust-api-design-qwmqrnfyi) · corrode · 47 upvotes · 7 comments - [Writing a RISC-V Emulator in Rust](https://daily.dev/posts/writing-a-risc-v-emulator-in-rust-eoq5cyajm) · Hacker News · 4 upvotes · 0 comments - [Beyond Memory Safety: What Makes Rust Different – Lessons from Autonomous Robotics](https://daily.dev/posts/beyond-memory-safety-what-makes-rust-different-lessons-from-autonomous-robotics-ivljxogzh) · InfoQ · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#infrastructure](https://daily.dev/tags/infrastructure), [#rust](https://daily.dev/tags/rust), [#embedded](https://daily.dev/tags/embedded) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/accessing-hardware-in-rust-i3uox0ypx) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Accessing Hardware in Rust","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/accessing-hardware-in-rust-i3uox0ypx","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/accessing-hardware-in-rust-i3uox0ypx"},"datePublished":"2026-03-18T14:33:55.907Z","dateModified":"2026-03-18T14:34:21.986Z","description":"A deep dive into hardware access patterns in Rust for bare-metal embedded systems. 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