Yes, new cars are evolving in terms of ECU architecture, and we are targeting small chips for two use cases:
First - as "edge components" get smarter - you still have small microcontrollers all over the car (for example - you need a local MCU and a complex PCB for running a headlight with dozens of LEDs with minimum wiring to a central command unit);
Secondly - you now have multi-core, multi-arhitecture controllers - and you need small OSs for some of these cores in order to run embedded apps efficiently.
Rust is certainly an attractive option, but the support for MCUs used in automotive seems weak (because the variety of LLVM backends is less than that of gcc). What do you think about this? Will you use a GCC-based Rust compiler (e.g. gccrs or rustc_codegen_gcc) or your own LLVM backend?
First - as "edge components" get smarter - you still have small microcontrollers all over the car (for example - you need a local MCU and a complex PCB for running a headlight with dozens of LEDs with minimum wiring to a central command unit);
Secondly - you now have multi-core, multi-arhitecture controllers - and you need small OSs for some of these cores in order to run embedded apps efficiently.