SymPLe: Complexity-Aware Design for Safety Critical I&C Systems

Abstract

Complexity significantly erodes confidence and trust in both the design and the operation of safety critical systems. During the design phase, complexity impedes the verification and certification processes that guarantee the prevention and control of system errors (or hazards) during operation. This paper presents a novel architectural framework, known as SymPLe, to manage the complexity of highly-assured systems. This framework explores the impact of architectural Complexity-Awareness during design to enhance the verifiability of a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) instrumentation and control (I&C) platform for nuclear power safety applications. SymPLe leverages model-based design and Complexity-Aware principles such that it is verifiable and implementable under IEC 61508-3 safety integrity level (SIL) 3/4 standards. An independent verification activity demonstrates the benefits of the Complexity-Aware design of the SymPLe overlay architecture.