EngineerZone Spotlight

In this two-part blog I am going to outline my own journey with IoT, IIoT, the cloud and cloud to cloud communications. IEC 61508 was published in 1998 and then revised in 2010. There is very little on it regarding new technologies including the clou...

For the second blog in a row I must advise you not to miss the video at the end even if your tire of the main topic before the end of the blog. It’s a good one and shows a man in action who really believes in safety. I do admit however it has n...

Network Perimeter – The Wall is Coming Down. The Digital Revolution is driving an unprecedented level of connectivity outside the traditional Enterprise Network. Here are some examples that illustrate the point: 68% of business application wor...

Verification and validation are important but separate topics within functional safety. However, the terms of often misused and mixed up including in a recent draft functional safety standard I was reading. In a nutshell, validation is the final veri...

by Vincent Roche, President & CEO, Analog Devices, Inc. As we turn our focus to 2019, it is natural to take stock of the events and trends of the past year and consider how they will influence and shape the coming year. As in years past, ...

The Internet of Things (IoT) – A Deluge of Devices. By all accounts, there will be 30-50 billion internet-connected devices by 2020. This is a massive cyber-attack surface to protect. The number of devices expands by the thousands every day; cr...

You couldn't build a house without tools and software is no different. IEC 61508 talks about two types of software tools. Online tools which run as part of the application and offline tools used during the development or manufacturing phases. Onl...

If you read my last blog, your notifications should be completely tailored to your communication preferences for EZ. We are now excited to unveil another customizing opportunity for our members. YOUR PROFILE! Our members view each...

The Digital Revolution is here. It’s been called the Internet of Things (IoT), or even the Internet of Everything. Applied to Industry, it’s called the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), Industry 4.0, and the Digital Enterprise. Regard...

The temptation to jump in and start coding is always great. For both safety and security if you take this approach you may pay for it later. Designing a proper software architecture can... Simplify interfaces Reduce the amount of code which has to b...

I won’t go so far as to say that functional safety guys hate software but sometimes you would be forgiven for thinking so. From a safety point of view, software is deemed to have too many states and is said to be un-testable. Figure 1 - A book...

In our last blog, we walked you through the new look of EngineerZone (EZ), offered some helpful tips, and showed you what you could expect as a new or returning EZ user. One tip, in particular, was how to receive and customize email notification...

Some of the most important semi-conductor information in IEC 61508:2010 is in in part 2 Annex E. This annex was added in the 2010 version of the standard and will be revised for revision 3 due out in the 2021/22 time frame.       &nbsp...

The AD7770 has 8 simultaneously sampling analog-to-digital converters with each channel having its own mux, PGA and SINC filter. The AD7770 is specified down to DC. However what is most eye catching from a functional safety point of view is...

This summer, I participated in a thought-provoking panel discussion at our newly relocated Analog Garage in downtown Boston with members of our local startup and VC communities. Moderated by Matt Duffy, head of marketing for weather technology compan...

We recently unveiled the new EngineerZone (EZ) and we are jumping at the opportunity to walk you through the new look, offer some helpful tips, and show you what you can expect as a new or returning EZ user.            &...

The AD7124 is a 24 bit sigma-delta ADC including on-chip muxes, PGA (programmable gain amplifier), voltage references, buffers, a stable clock, voltage regulators and lots of diagnostics. Figure 1 - block diagram of the AD7124-4...

This blog is a follow on to the last one which covered demand modes and particularly low and high demand mode. This description is designed to fit in the length of a blog and target enthusiastic amateurs in functional safety, experts might want more ...

High resolution, high fidelity and high quality are some typical jargon used in the audio industry, but they truly are essential features for an audiophile. Whilst they look so attractive, they are not so easy to achieve unless the right components...

In my last blog on soft errors I promised that the next blog would be on the topic of PFH and PFD. However, since that promise it occurred to me that I should first cover low and high demand mode. Within IEC 61508 there are basically two types of saf...

Lithium-Ion batteries are produced in a variety of form factors and capacities and are used to provide power in a range of applications from cell phones, laptop computers, electric vehicles, to energy storage. The cells used in these applications c...

I am long overdue to include a blog on the functional safety requirements for software and indeed the functional safety requirements for Verilog code however this isn’t that blog. By soft errors I mean bit flips in RAM or FF that are not caused...

Is there a secret sauce for functional safety? I have been asked if there was only one thing from functional safety that I think should be applied to every product development, what would it be.  My answer: Rigorous requirements management. Req...

I recently came across a series of standards for lifts (elevators), escalators and moving walkways. I thought it was a good example of a sector specific standard. The standard in question is ISO 22201-1 and was first published in 2017. It uses SIL le...

While I am the functional safety guy for Analog Device’s industrial products I find it useful to read books related to many application areas. Often what is poorly explained in one book is very well explained in a book from another domain. I fi...