[arcticbull]

You can use wider types, maybe even floats I can't recall, they'll get lowered to the target architecture and the generated code will be in terms of narrower registers.

A 32-bit add will get turned into 1 8-bit add and 3 8-bit add-with-carry instructions. You won't even notice, unless to your point, you see a performance issue or start running out of code space.

[bpye]

AVR GCC totally lets you use floats, I'm not sure about Rust. It does as you'd expect result in a lot of code, but it seems correct.

[Gordonjcp]

It does, but they are unbearably slow.