1. Purpose of the gate
The accelerator board, its power delivery and its cooling are designed and released, so bring-up boards are ready when silicon arrives.
This gate decides whether the system around the chip is ready to build. Its timing matters as much as its content: if boards are late, first silicon waits on the bench. Its content matters because power delivery and cooling set how close to its envelope the accelerator can run in customers' data centres.
The review checks board design reviews, signal and power integrity, thermal results at the envelope and in fault cases, and the bring-up plan.
Accelerator boards draw high current that changes quickly when large parts of the chip start or stop work. Power delivery is therefore reviewed for transient behaviour as well as steady load, and the power management features that limit fast changes are checked with the architecture team.
The review also considers production. Choices made now about parts, connectors and cooling hardware decide what can be bought in volume later, so long lead and single source parts are named with a plan.
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