A Validated Methodology for Designing Safe Industrial Systems on a Chip

Industrial automation applications across all segments—from factory, machine, and process automation to energy generation, distribution, and transportation—require an increasing amount of safety-enabled equipment. This white paper explores a case study on industrial system on a chip (SoC)—a drive on a chip—to explain how engineers can save up to 18 months of design time in achieving product certification according to IEC 61508. Having prequalified devices such as Altera® FPGAs means the designer benefits from the flexibility of FPGAs without having to worry about whether these FPGAs can be easily used for safety applications.