Ferrocene

Ferrocene will provide a qualified Rust compiler tool chain. With this, Ferrous Systems will make Rust a first-class language for mission-critical and functional safety systems.

Ferrocene will be an ISO26262 qualified version of the existing open-source compiler, rustc. Ferrocene will be first made available to customers in the ISO 26262 space, with others like DO-178C, IEC 61508 and IEC 62278 in mind.

If you are working in this space and are interested in supporting this effort, we’re currently looking for partners.

By getting involved, you’ll be supporting a team leading initiatives towards language specification and verification, supporting community tools, and improving the safety-critical developer experience. The intention in creating the compiler is to balance reinforcing the current Rust ecosystem while driving language innovation with research and industry feedback.

We use an iterative approach to bring the Rust language to the highest standards of trust all while adhering to Rust’s continuous innovation and developer-first values.

Check out our Ferrocene blog series for more background and updates on the project’s status and developments.

Partners and early access

Ferrocene is a principled project with a lot of work ahead, requiring cross-industry collaboration and continuous feedback. It has support from crucial industry partners and subject experts, but we need to build a thoughtful community.

Right now, Ferrous Systems and the Ferrocene team are calling for additional partners to join this effort. We're currently looking for partners from diverse industries, including:

• Safety-critical sectors, such as automotive, railway, and aerospace
• Operators of mission-critical infrastructure with high-reliability and security concerns, such as cloud vendors and blockchain
• Hardware vendors
• Compiler vendors
• Formal verification and formal reasoning practitioners and tool vendors

If this describes you or your organization, we’d love to hear from you and talk about how we can support your goals. Our partners get exclusive early access to Ferrocene releases and custom research and development with dedicated engineers.

Qualification

Ferrous Systems is committed to qualify Ferrocene as a Rust compiler at ISO 26262/ASIL-D readiness. Other standards are planned. Along the way, we will work closely with industry experts to increase the toolchain's quality and gather safety-critical industry feedback and experiences.

Supply Chain Security

Ferrocene goes beyond the compiler in keeping all aspects of the software being built in mind, particularly the distribution, traceability and use of own or foreign libraries.

Long-Term Support

The Ferrocene team will maintain designated legacy versions of the Rust toolchain and supporting utilities. This support includes backporting fixes of critical language and library issues (performance bugs, unsoundness, security) and maintaining key rustc targets, including test cases and platform-specific testing.

We’re committed to providing secure, auditable distribution channels for these toolchain updates. Active communication of issues to clients and helping with fixes rounds up the package.

Community

The Ferrocene project acts as a beacon and gathering place for mission and safety-critical concerns in the Rust project. This includes strong testing of the very core of the language on a number of specialized platforms. We’re creating a developer representation and raising the visibility of these industries in the Rust ecosystem.