1. Purpose of the gate
A recurring decision: each software release after launch is checked for correctness, performance and compatibility before it ships to customers.
This is a recurring gate. Each maintenance release adds model support, performance or fixes, and each must not break what customers already run. The review is deliberately routine: the same checks every time, so customers can trust every update.
It feeds the product lifecycle's lifecycle reviews with what releases add and fix.
The checks scale with the change. A release with a new compiler optimisation or driver update gets the full regression on qualified customer workloads and benchmarks; a documentation fix gets less. The review records which checks were run so customers can judge the release.
Releases that add support for new model families also add those families to the regression set, so later releases keep them working. Over the life of the product the regression set grows to reflect what customers actually run.
Release notes are part of the release. They say what changed, what was fixed, what is known not to work and which versions of frameworks, drivers and operating systems were tested, in words customers can act on.
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