> In Figure 12, they simply stop optimizing the code once desired rate is reached.

Yes. The goal was to handle the maximum data rate of the used sensor, and stop there. Time was limited on both ends.

> Just at the end of the project the Rust firmware gets over a third performance boost, most likely from their OS developers.

The ST intern found those boosts all by himself. They compared the exact MCU & peripheral initialization of the C and Rust firmwares, tightened I2C timings (where STM Cube has vendor tuned & qualified values), and enabled the MCU's instruction cache, which somehow is not default in Embassy's HAL. We were quite impressed actually, the last days before the deadline were quite productive, optimization wise.