Improving Performance with NIFs
Learn about NIFS and how it can be implemented and integrated into our defined framework.
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What are NIFS?
Native Implemented Functions (NIFs) are a great way to inject speed into our Elixir/Erlang programs. NIFs are programs implemented in compiled languages like Rust or C/C++ that are then linked and loaded into our Elixir module at runtime.
NIFs were designed to be a simpler and more efficient way of interfacing with native code than ports. Ports interact with external programs and offer a mechanism for implementing program features in a different language.
NIFs are often used in places where Elixir/Erlang alone isn’t enough to efficiently get the job done. For example, the Matrex library uses NIFs to perform fast matrix operations because Elixir/Erlang isn’t optimized to perform these operations alone.
One thing to consider with NIFs is that they have the potential to crash the program. NIFs take the fault-tolerance out of applications because the code loaded is from an external program. Additionally, NIFs have a strange way of interacting with Erlang’s scheduler. The scheduler expects NIFs to return in a certain amount of ...