Engineering Glossary

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

EU Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) — The landmark European regulation imposing mandatory cybersecurity requirements on all hardware and software products with digital elements sold in the EU.

Digital Twin — A real-time virtual replica of a physical device, system, or process that enables simulation, monitoring, and predictive analytics throughout the product lifecycle.

DO-254 (RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED-80) — The international standard providing design assurance guidance for airborne electronic hardware, including FPGAs and ASICs used in aviation.

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

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

Hardware Security Module (HSM) — A dedicated, tamper-resistant physical device for cryptographic key management, digital signing, and encryption in high-security environments.

Internet of Things (IoT) — A network of physical devices embedded with sensors, software, and connectivity that exchange data to enable intelligent automation and monitoring.

NIS2 Directive (EU 2022/2555) — The EU's updated cybersecurity directive imposing strict security obligations on essential and important entities across critical infrastructure sectors.

Printed Circuit Board (PCB) Design — The engineering discipline of designing multi-layer circuit boards that physically interconnect electronic components in hardware products.

Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) — Next-generation cryptographic algorithms designed to resist attacks from quantum computers, essential for long-lived embedded systems and IoT devices.

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

Register-Transfer Level (RTL) Design — The hardware abstraction layer where engineers describe digital logic as data flow between registers and combinational operations.

Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) — A machine-readable inventory of all software components, libraries, and dependencies in a product, required by the EU Cyber Resilience Act for vulnerability tracking and supply chain transparency.

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) — A dedicated, tamper-resistant microchip that provides hardware-level protection for cryptographic keys, device identity, and sensitive data in embedded and IoT systems.

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

V-Model — A systems engineering methodology where each development phase has a corresponding verification phase, ensuring rigorous validation in safety-critical hardware and software.

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