Field Programmable Gate Array Technology for NPP I&Cs - Nuclear Power Plant Instrumentation and Control Systems for Safety and Security - page 127

tors, coding-decoding circuits, frequency dividers,
latches, multipliers, multiplexors, registers, shift
registers, low integration level elements, I/O gates.

postulates of existing standards regulating soft-
ware structure cannot be mechanically taken for
construction of FPGA-project LC.
Our analysis of software LC showed that for
FPGA it should study the section of LC beginning
from specification of an I&C system and up to
its integration. Such actions may be performed in
parallel to software development.
Besides, verification after each stage of devel-
opment is obligatory for both FPGA electronic
designs and software. Software verification is a
process aimed to confirm software compliance to
defined requirements by way of versatile tests and
obtaining verifiable proofs (Lyu, M. R., 1996).
FPGA electronic design is developed on the
basis of System Requirements Specification (SRS)
document with due consideration of function
distribution and non-functional safety require-
ments between FPGAs and other hardware. The
developed FPGA-based digital device must be

A Typical Life Cycle of FPGA-
Based I&C System

In development of FPGA-based I&C systems LC
(Figure 4) it should be taken into consideration that,
from the one side, FPGA-based digital devices are
complex software-hardware products, thus having
much in common with software. Therefore, in
analysis and development of FPGA-based I&C
system LC the postulates of software engineering
standards are reasonably useful (Kharchenko, V.
et al., 2004; Kharchenko, V. et al., 2001; Scott,
J., Lawrence, J., 1994).
From the other side, FPGA electronic designs
as a specific I&C component have some pecu-
liarities different from software. Therefore the

Figure 4. A life cycle of FPGA-based I&C system