Functional safety is paramount in industries like automotive, aerospace, and industrial control. ISO 26262 is the international standard for functional safety of electrical and/or electronic systems in road vehicles. Achieving compliance with such standards using modern languages like Rust presents both challenges and significant advantages.
Rust's memory safety guarantees and strong type system inherently reduce many common sources of bugs that can lead to safety violations. This article explores how Rust's features align with the principles of ISO 26262, particularly in preventing undefined behavior and ensuring robust software. We discuss the process of toolchain qualification, which is a critical aspect of the standard, and our roadmap towards ASIL D certification for our Rust RISC-V toolchain.
We also delve into the necessary development processes, documentation, and verification activities required for ISO 26262 compliance, and how our platform and expertise can support your journey to building safety-critical applications with confidence using Rust on RISC-V.