Diversity and Multi-Version Systems - Nuclear Power Plant Instrumentation and Control Systems for Safety and Security - page 220

Cost-Effective Approach to
RTS Diversity Assessment
under Uncertainties

platform. Main peculiarities of the platform are
realization of control and other safety-related
functions without software and ensuring depend-
ability- and diversity-scalable decisions of safety-
critical I&C. Experience of RPC Radiy has proved
effectiveness of these decisions.

Nowadays, the uncertainties, associated with
an alternative RTS diversity assessment, create
a demand for the methods to make possible the
translation, to a mathematical language, of the

Table 10. Assessment of the second variant of two-channel system (Altera and Xilinx FPGA)

Diversity types Result of analysis Assessment results

Yes/No Implementation Local

metric

Ratio Weighting

coefficient

Diversity of
programmable
components (A)

Diversity of manufacturers of
FPGA (A1)

Yes Altera vs. Xilinx 0.8 0.25 0.25

Diversity of technologies of
FPGA producing (A2)

No SRAM 0 0.4

Diversity of FPGA families
(A3)

Yes Cyclone vs. Virtex

(based on A1)

1 0.25

Diversity of FPGA from the
same family (A4)

Yes different families (based

on A1)

1 0.1

Diversity of printed
circuit boards (PCBs)
(B)

Diversity of PCB development
technologies and manufacturers

Yes Different manufacturers

and technologies

1 1 0.15

Diversity of
CASE-tools (C)

Diversity of CASE-tools
developers (C1)

Yes Altera vs. Xilinx 1 0.5 0.15

Diversity of CASE-tools (C2) Yes Quartus II vs. ISE (based

on C1)

1 0.3

Diversity of CASE-tools
configurations (C3)

Yes Different tools for

design but the same for
verification

0.7 0.2

Diversity of languages
of
FPGA projects
development (D)

Diversity of language kinds
(D1)

Yes Graphic Notation and

Hardware Description
Language are used

0.5 0.4 0.15

Diversity of hardware
description languages (D2)

Yes VHDL vs. Verilog 0.8 0.6

Diversity of
specification
presentation (E)

Diversity of FPGA initial
specification languages (E1)

No The same language 0 0.5 0.1

Diversity of FPGA
specification models (E2)

Yes B&HDL used for Altera 0.8 0.5

Diversity of processes
(P)

Diversity of development
processes (P1)

Yes Different teams 0.7 0.5 0.2

Diversity of verification
processes (P2)

Yes Different departments 0.85 0.3

Diversity of maintenance (P3) Yes Different teams 0.7 0.2

Overall assessment (general diversity metric) 0.72