Rust is moving closer to wider deployment in industrial and embedded environments now that Ferrous Systems has made a certified subset of the Rust core library available in the latest version of the Ferrocene toolchain. The certification falls under IEC 61508 at SIL2 level. This is a widely used standard in electronics for industrial safety.
The core library is crucial for systems that run without a standard library, such as firmware or real-time control software. Until now, it has been challenging to use Rust in sectors where safety requirements are paramount formally. This is because no officially certified base library was available. With the certification of the core subset, development teams can now use a validated foundation for no_std software.
According to The Register, this covers a significant portion of the core functionality. The publication mentions strings, slices, pointer functionality, and commonly used utilities such as Option and Clone, among other things. This selection enables the use of Rust in environments where formal validation of the libraries used is mandatory. The Register also emphasizes that the certified subset is intended for a range of widely used platforms in industrial applications, including x86_64-Linux, QNX Neutrino on both x86_64 and Armv8-A, and various RTOS variants on Armv7E-M and Armv8-A.
Collisions between humans and machines
The Register also outlines how the use of Ferrocene is already visible in concrete industrial projects. Sonair applies the toolchain in acoustic detection and ranging systems for robots running on Arm-based subsystems. Kiteshield is working on a safety platform for mining that uses ultra-wideband technology to prevent collisions between humans and machines. These examples show that Rust is no longer just of theoretical interest in regulated sectors.
The medium situates the development further within the context of growing attention to memory safety. Much embedded software is still written in C or C++, languages that remain susceptible to memory-related errors. Rust is seen as a possible solution because it prevents certain error classes from occurring at the language level. The Register notes that Rust projects must also be developed carefully to avoid new risks.
Large number of improvements
The certification is part of Ferrocene version 25.11.0. This also includes regular improvements from recent Rust versions, such as extensions to const generics, additional lints, and broader support for large integer types in C links. This keeps the toolchain technically up to date while also meeting formal safety requirements.
This makes Rust more accessible to sectors where software developers not only strive for high reliability but also must demonstrate that the underlying components have been formally assessed. The move could make Rust a viable alternative to traditional system programming languages that currently dominate industrial embedded software.