Overview
AWS S3, one of the world’s largest cloud storage services, has quietly undergone a massive transformation over the years. Almost everything in S3’s request path has been rewritten in Rust to achieve the highest performance and lowest latency possible. This reveals how major tech companies are adopting systems programming languages for critical infrastructure without making it a public talking point.
Key Takeaways
- Major cloud services can undergo complete language rewrites behind the scenes - performance improvements don’t always require visible changes to users
- Systems programming languages like Rust are becoming the go-to choice for rewriting performance-critical infrastructure at scale
- Large tech companies often don’t publicize their most significant technical decisions - the biggest engineering transformations happen quietly
- Modern cloud infrastructure requires constantly balancing cutting-edge hardware capabilities with software optimization
Topics Covered
- 0:00 - AWS S3’s Hidden Rust Migration: Discussion of how AWS has rewritten almost everything in S3’s request path using Rust over the years
- 2:00 - Performance and Latency Priorities: Explanation of why S3 team prioritizes highest performance and lowest latency in their engineering decisions
- 4:00 - Hardware and Software Evolution: How AWS works with cutting-edge hardware while simultaneously rewriting performance-critical code