They are now offering a complete solution that will help to accelerate the development of safety-critical systems to make software-defined vehicles safer and more affordable.
The solution supports the Rust programming language and combines HighTec's Rust compiler, qualified to ISO 26262 ASIL D, with ST's Stellar, the first 28nm microcontrollers certified to the same safety standard.
Rust is gaining significant momentum in the automotive industry for its strong safety and reliability features.
“Software-defined principles are transforming vehicle design, and ownership experiences, replacing traditional hardwired electronic control units (ECUs) with programmable systems,” explained Davide Santo, Automotive Microcontroller Business Unit Director, STMicroelectronics. “This is the future for vehicles with any type of powertrain, letting automakers easily differentiate their product ranges and dynamically update vehicle features. The collaboration with HighTec, ensures that automotive manufacturers can leverage the power of Rust while meeting the highest safety standards in the industry.”
“Here at HighTec, our engineers created the industry’s first software compiler to support Rust, the modern safety-ready programming language, and achieve qualification to the highest level of the automotive functional-safety standard, ISO 26262 ASIL D,” added Mario Cupelli, CTO at HighTec EDV-Systeme. “On the other hand, ST’s Stellar automotive microcontrollers are the first 28nm components certified according to ISO 26262 ASIL D. This makes them a natural fit with our compiler, enabling customers to have a complete solution where safety is assured seamlessly across compiler, hardware, and software.”
Automakers are facing intense pressure to shorten development cycles and meet evolving safety standards, and this collaboration will provide a robust and powerful safety compliant solution for automotive software development.
The integration of the ASIL D qualified Rust compiler into the Stellar MCU family accelerates the development of safety-critical systems, reducing time-to-market while maintaining strict compliance with automotive safety requirements.
Rust's safety, performance, and reliability have made it an emerging choice for automotive mission-critical systems, and according to many is set to shape the future of the automotive industry.
With HighTec’s Rust compiler support for Stellar products, ST can now offer an integrated, richly featured, and efficient toolchain to its automotive customers that accelerates development cycles while ensuring compliance with ISO 26262.
Their close cooperation ensures that developers can now integrate Rust along with their valuable C/C++ code base into their safety-critical projects with Stellar and accelerate the development of safety-critical systems, while maintaining strict compliance with automotive safety and security requirements.
Rust contains provisions to protect the safety of memory, process threads, and data types ensuring enhanced resilience that’s appropriate for critical automotive systems, while Rust’s runtime efficiency is comparable to C/C++ in execution time and memory usage.
HighTec’s C/C++ and Rust automotive grade compiler allows Rust's safety benefits to be integrated alongside legacy C/C++ code to build safe and secure automotive applications for the next-generation of software-defined vehicles.
ST’s Stellar automotive MCUs are built on Arm Cortex-R52+ cores and a robust safety-focused hardware architecture. They also adhere to ISO 21434 cybersecurity standards and comply with UN155 requirements, which ensure meeting the latest safety and security standards.
