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Using Modern Design Tools for Digital Avionics DevelopmentUsing Modem Design Tools for Digital Avionics Development Shrinking development time and increased complexity of new avionics forces the designer to use modem tools and methods during hardware development. Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center have successfully upgraded their design flow and used it to develop a Mongoose V based radiation tolerant processor board for the International Space Station's Water Recovery System. The design flow, based on hardware description languages, simulation, synthesis, hardware models, and full functional software model libraries, allowed designers to fully simulate the processor board from reset, through initialization before any boards were built. The fidelity of a digital simulation is limited to the accuracy of the models used and how realistically the designer drives the circuit's inputs during simulation. By using the actual silicon during simulation, device modeling errors are reduced. Numerous design flaws were discovered early in the design phase when they could be easily fixed. The use of hardware models and actual MIPS software loaded into full functional memory models also provided checkout of the software development environment. This paper will describe the design flow used to develop the processor board and give examples of errors that were found using the tools. An overview of the processor board firmware will also be covered.
Document ID
20000044327
Acquisition Source
Marshall Space Flight Center
Document Type
Conference Paper
Authors
Hyde, David W.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Lakin, David R., II
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Asquith, Thomas E.
(NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Huntsville, AL United States)
Date Acquired
August 19, 2013
Publication Date
January 1, 2000
Subject Category
Avionics And Aircraft Instrumentation
Meeting Information
Meeting: 19th Digital Avionics System Conference
Location: Philadelphia, PA
Country: United States
Start Date: October 7, 2000
End Date: October 12, 2000
Funding Number(s)
PROJECT: RTOP 477-72-W3
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Work of the US Gov. Public Use Permitted.

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