The

Advisory Circular __NOTOC__ Advisory circular (AC) refers to a type of publication offered by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to provide guidance for compliance with airworthiness regulations, pilot certification, operational standards, training standards, ...

AC 20-152, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware, identifies the RTCA-published standard

DO-254 RTCA DO-254 / EUROCAE ED-80, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware is a document providing guidance for the development of airborne electronic hardware, published by RTCA, Incorporated and EUROCAE. The DO-254/ED-80 standard w ...

as defining "an acceptable means, but not the only means" to secure

FAA The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is the largest transportation agency of the U.S. government and regulates all aspects of civil aviation in the country as well as over surrounding international waters. Its powers include air traffic m ...

approval of complex custom micro-coded components within aircraft systems with Item Design Assurance Levels (IDAL) of A, B, or C. Specifically excluding COTS microcontrollers, complex custom micro-coded components include

field programmable gate array A field-programmable gate array (FPGA) is an integrated circuit designed to be configured by a customer or a designer after manufacturinghence the term '' field-programmable''. The FPGA configuration is generally specified using a hardware d ...

s (FPGA),

programmable logic device A programmable logic device (PLD) is an electronic component used to build reconfigurable digital circuits. Unlike digital logic constructed using discrete logic gates with fixed functions, a PLD has an undefined function at the time of manu ...

s (PLD), and

application-specific integrated circuit An application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC ) is an integrated circuit (IC) chip customized for a particular use, rather than intended for general-purpose use, such as a chip designed to run in a digital voice recorder or a high-effici ...

s (ASIC), particularly in cases where correctness and safety can not be verified with testing alone, necessitating methodical design assurance. Application of DO-254 to IDAL D components is optional.

References

External links

AC 20-152, Design Assurance Guidance for Airborne Electronic Hardware
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