IVV OF FPGA BASED NUCLEAR PLANT APPLICATIONS

摘要

The Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) methods, processes, and tools are described for Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) based nuclear safety related (Class IE) applications. Specific FPGA-centric IV&V processes are required for these FPGA-based development projects due to the inherent complex nature of the FPGA designs. The IV&V processes are used to determine if the development products for FPGA-based applications conform to the top-level requirements. Also, the IV&V processes determine if the resulting FPGA design satisfies the intended use and user needs. The scope of this IV&V effort encompasses the various stages of development for these FPGA-based applications. The IV&V processes include analysis, review, inspection, assessment, and testing of FPGA-based products. The IV&V processes for FPGA-based applications were derived from the standard digital microprocessor-based IV&V methodologies used by Westinghouse. These processes were enhanced and tailored to account for the unique challenges in performing verification and validation activities on FPGA-based designs.