1. Purpose and scope
For an AI accelerator, the software stack decides much of the delivered performance and almost all of the developer experience. A chip that looks strong on paper but has a weak compiler, missing operators or a fragile runtime will not be adopted. This stage builds the stack in parallel with the hardware, against the frozen software interface, and uses emulation to run complete workloads before the design is committed to silicon.
The stage has a second, equally important purpose: finding hardware problems through software while they can still be fixed cheaply. Missing instructions, awkward memory layouts, synchronisation bugs and performance cliffs often show up only when a real compiler drives the hardware. The stage ends when target workloads run end to end on emulation with checked results, and when the bring-up software is ready for first silicon. Verification closes coverage on the frozen design in the same stage and signs it off just before the software readiness review, so that the fixes software prompts are verified too.
12 more sections for registered members.