Filling the Assurance Gap on Complex Electronics

Many of the methods used to develop software bare a close resemblance to Complex Electronics (CE) development. CE are now programmed to perform tasks that were previously handled by software, such as communication protocols. For example, the James Webb Space Telescope will use Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs), which can have over a million logic gates, to send telemetry. System-on-chip (SoC) devices, another type of complex electronics, can combine a microprocessor, input and output channels, and sometimes an FPGA for programmability. With this increased intricacy, the possibility of software-like bugs such as incorrect design, logic, and unexpected interactions within the logic is great. Since CE devices are obscuring the hardware/software boundary, mature software methodologies have been proposed, with slight modifications, to develop these devices. By using standardized S/W Engineering methods such as checklists, missing requirements and bugs can be detected earlier in the development cycle, thus creating a development process for CE that can be easily maintained and configurable based on the device used. Plastow, Richard A. Glenn Research Center NASA/CR-2007-214939, E-16173