Enhancing Elixir Performance using NIFs

Andrés Alejos has shared his insights on improving Elixir performance by writing NIFs to leverage native code and external libraries, such as C and C++ APIs. NIFs allow Elixir code to run at native speeds for compute-intensive tasks by executing outside of the BEAM virtual machine. He provides an introduction to NIFs, including how they can be used for time-sensitive operations or to interface with hardware. The article also details implementation practices and tips for writing NIFs, emphasizing the importance of memory management and error handling in the native environment. Andrés offers an example of a real-world use case integrating the XGBoost library with Elixir through NIFs, demonstrating practical code examples along with implementation challenges and potential risks associated with writing and using NIFs. He concludes by mentioning safer alternatives to C for NIF writing, like Rustler and Zigler, and suggests that while NIFs in C might not completely disappear, the community continually provides safer and more robust solutions.