IAR and Quintauris collaborate on functional safety software for RISC-V automotive systems

IAR and Quintauris have agreed to integrate IAR’s safety-certified development tools into the RT-Europa reference architecture, a RISC-V platform aimed at real-time automotive processors. The move potentially strengthens the tool support available to European engineers working on safety-critical ECUs and zonal architectures. This might attract interest from eeNews Europe readers because functional safety software and RISC-V are becoming more visible in European automotive programs, particularly around next-generation microcontrollers and real-time domain controllers.

Partnership scope and technical context

The collaboration brings IAR’s compiler technology and future build, debugging and test automation into the RT-Europa stack. According to the companies, the combined environment is intended to give developers a more consolidated workflow when targeting RISC-V automotive designs that require ISO 26262 compliance.

RT-Europa is positioned as a specialized RISC-V architecture for real-time processing. By making IAR’s functional safety toolchain part of the platform, both partners aim to support teams building software with strict determinism, long-term maintainability, and traceability expectations.

Thomas Andersson, CPO at IAR, said: “We are excited to join forces with Quintauris to extend our support for RISC-V developers in the automotive domain. Through this partnership, we continue our commitment to providing world-class toolchains that ensure safety, quality, and performance for next-generation embedded systems.”

Quintauris, formed by companies including Bosch, Infineon, NXP, Nordic Semiconductor, Qualcomm, and STMicroelectronics, is working on profiles and reference architectures to make RISC-V more deployable across automotive and industrial markets. Pedro Lopez, Market Strategy Officer at Quintauris, said: “By integrating IAR’s proven toolchain technology into our reference architecture, we’re enabling developers to confidently build and certify safety-critical systems.”

Implications for RISC-V adoption

While RISC-V is still emerging in automotive, activity around real-time controllers and domain-specific processors is increasing. Europe’s semiconductor ecosystem, including several Quintauris founders, has a direct interest in shaping the software stack around these architectures.

The integration potentially contributes to a more cohesive tool environment where safety certification flows, compiler qualification, debugging, and CI/CD for embedded software can be aligned across vendors. For engineering teams, this may help reduce fragmentation when evaluating RISC-V for long-lifecycle automotive platforms.