Engineering Glossary

Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) — A custom silicon chip optimized for a single specific use case or application.

BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) — Wireless protocol for ultra-low-power IoT devices, enabling years of battery life with data ranges up to 240 m.

BOM (Bill of Materials) Management is the strategic engineering and supply chain discipline of selecting, tracking, and maintaining every physical component in a hardware product to mitigate lifecycle obsolescence and shortages.

BSP (Board Support Package) — Hardware abstraction layer bridging PCB design to an RTOS, including startup code, drivers, and peripheral config.

CE Marking — Mandatory European conformity marking indicating a product meets all EU health, safety, and environmental requirements.

EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) — Mandatory cybersecurity regulation for all hardware and software products with digital elements sold in the EU.

CVE (Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures) — Global standard for identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities, each assigned a unique CVE-ID for tracking and patching.

Design for Manufacturing (DFM) and Design for Assembly (DFA) are critical engineering methodologies that ensure a hardware product can be mass-produced efficiently, reliably, and profitably on a factory line.

Digital Product Passport (DPP) — Structured digital record of product identity, composition, and recycling info, mandated by EU ESPR regulation.

Digital Twin — Real-time virtual replica of a physical device or system enabling simulation, monitoring, and predictive analytics.

DO-254 (RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED-80) — International standard for design assurance of airborne electronic hardware including FPGAs and ASICs.

Edge AI (Artificial Intelligence at the Edge) — Processing AI algorithms locally on hardware devices for real-time inference without cloud dependency.

Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) is the ability of electronic equipment to function in its environment without introducing intolerable electromagnetic disturbances (EMI) to other equipment.

ENISA — The EU's central cybersecurity authority, responsible for CRA vulnerability reports, certification schemes, and policy guidance.

EU AI Act — First comprehensive AI legal framework establishing risk-based rules for AI systems on the EU market, with edge AI hardware implications.

Field-Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) — A reconfigurable semiconductor device that can be programmed after manufacturing for custom hardware logic.

A Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) is a software subsystem that provides a standardized API to interact with underlying hardware components, hiding the complex, silicon-specific registry details from the application code.

Hardware Root of Trust (HRoT) — Immutable, tamper-resistant hardware foundation anchoring all cryptographic operations and security in a device.

Hardware Security Module (HSM) — Tamper-resistant device for cryptographic key management, digital signing, and encryption in secure environments.

Internet of Things (IoT) — Network of sensor-equipped devices exchanging data to enable intelligent automation and real-time monitoring.

JTAG and SWD are the primary hardware interfaces used by embedded engineers for boundary-scan testing, internal silicon debugging, and direct memory programming on microcontrollers and microprocessors.

LoRaWAN — Low-power, long-range wireless protocol enabling IoT sensor networks spanning 5-15 km with multi-year battery life.

The Low Voltage Directive (LVD) is an EU regulatory framework ensuring that electrical equipment within certain voltage limits provides a high level of protection for European citizens.

Matter — Universal smart home connectivity standard (CSA) enabling interoperability across Apple, Google, Amazon over Thread and Wi-Fi.

Understanding the architectural and application differences between Microcontroller Units (MCUs) running bare-metal or RTOS, and Microprocessor Units (MPUs) running full operating systems like Linux.

MCUboot — Open-source secure bootloader for 32-bit MCUs with verified boot, encrypted OTA updates, and rollback protection.

MISRA C — Coding guidelines for safe, reliable C software in embedded and safety-critical systems. 2023 edition supports C11/C18.

NIS2 Directive (EU 2022/2555) — EU cybersecurity directive imposing strict security obligations on essential entities across critical infrastructure.

A Neural Processing Unit (NPU) is a specialized hardware accelerator designed specifically to execute machine learning algorithms (like convolutional neural networks) with vastly superior speed and energy efficiency compared to standard CPUs.

OTA Update (Over-the-Air) — Wireless firmware delivery enabling remote updates to embedded devices, now mandatory under the EU Cyber Resilience Act.

PCB Design — Engineering discipline of designing multi-layer circuit boards interconnecting electronic components in hardware products.

Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) — Next-gen cryptographic algorithms resistant to quantum computer attacks, essential for long-lived embedded systems.

Radio Equipment Directive (RED) — EU regulation mandating cybersecurity and data protection for all wireless devices sold in Europe.

RISC-V — An open-standard instruction set architecture (ISA) enabling royalty-free custom processor design, driving Europe's push for semiconductor sovereignty.

RoHS restricts specific hazardous materials in electronic products, while REACH governs the registration, evaluation, authorization, and restriction of chemicals across all EU-manufactured or imported goods.

Register-Transfer Level (RTL) Design — Hardware abstraction layer describing digital logic as data flow between registers and operations.

RTOS (Real-Time Operating System) — Specialized OS guaranteeing deterministic task execution within strict timing constraints for embedded devices.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) — Machine-readable inventory of all software components and dependencies, required by the EU CRA for vulnerability tracking.

Secure Boot — A hardware-rooted security mechanism that ensures only authenticated and cryptographically verified firmware runs on a device from power-on.

Secure Element (SE) — Tamper-resistant microchip providing hardware-level protection for cryptographic keys and device identity in IoT systems.

Sensor Fusion is the algorithmic process of combining data from multiple distinct sensors to compute a unified, highly accurate output state that is better than any individual sensor could provide alone.

SIL (Safety Integrity Level) and ASIL (Automotive SIL) are formal, quantified risk classification schemes used to define the required safety and reliability of electronic systems that could cause injury or death upon failure.

System on Chip (SoC) — An integrated circuit that integrates all components of a computer or other electronic system into a single chip.

TinyML — ML inference on microcontrollers consuming milliwatts, enabling on-device AI for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

V-Model — Systems engineering methodology pairing each development phase with a verification phase for safety-critical hardware validation.

VHSIC Hardware Description Language (VHDL) — The industry-standard language for designing and modeling digital circuits used in FPGA and ASIC development.

The WEEE Directive governs how electrical and electronic equipment is treated at the end of its lifecycle, mandating producer responsibility for collection, recycling, and recovery.

Zephyr RTOS — Modular open-source RTOS from the Linux Foundation supporting 450+ boards with BLE/Thread/LoRaWAN and MCUboot secure boot.