Feature: Medical electronics


Feature: Medical electronics


Preventing damage to medical instruments caused by interference ensures continued patient safety


reduce overall expenditure on medical care. Above all, for each patient’s health and safety, medical


A Designing


modern medical equipment


requires secure solutions By Silicon Motion design and


development engineers 32 March 2023 www.electronicsworld.co.uk


equipment must maintain normal operation at all times. No component can be allowed to fail without warning; downtime whilst equipment awaits repair also interrupts medical care. With this in mind, manufacturers have always adhered to strict standards for efficiency, stability and durability when choosing components for their medical equipment designs. Medical imaging equipment such as ultrasound, X ray, CT


or MRI scanners contain relatively large parts, leaving limited space in which to fit a motherboard – which means the smaller the motherboard, the better. The FerriSSD series of solid-state drives from Silicon Motion offer the NAND Flash memory and controller on a single chip, keeping sizes small by eliminating external connectors. This also produces a lighter motherboard in a smaller size.


Reliability requirements One of the most important requirements set by medical device manufacturers is reliability, which requires comprehensive test coverage, stringent temperature testing and very low defect rates. Silicon Motion’s FerriSSD products contain several technologies


that greatly increase reliability and augment their value in medical applications. Tese include:


(1) NANDXtend Error Code Correction (ECC) FerriSSD combines the high-performance LDPC Error Code Correction engine patented by Silicon Motion, with Redundant Arrays of Independent Disks (RAID) functionality. Tese technologies enhance reliability and extend the program/ erase (P/E) cycle rating, extending the life of the SSD’s NAND Flash. In addition, NANDXtend increases the data storage capacity and reduces data errors caused by operation at high temperatures. NANDXtend is a firmware technology that meets the design requirements of TLC SSDs, where three bits are written to each memory cell. Combined with LDPC (low-density parity check) RAID Data Recovery correction technologies, the NANDXtend three-level error correction algorithm can decode in parallel, and correct errors with precision, at high speed.


geing populations and an increase in chronic diseases are driving demand for medical care, reflected by strong growth in the global medical device industry. One response to growing pressure on healthcare services is an intensified focus on prevention and early diagnosis, to


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44