1. Purpose of the gate
Software architecture approved is where the software stops being a plan and becomes a design that the chip is built around. The hardware-software interface, the memory map, the boot flow and the split of work between boot ROM, firmware on internal cores and drivers on the host processor are baselined and placed under joint change control with the hardware team. From here, a change to a register, an interrupt or a boot source is a change to both designs and is costed as such.
The gate waits for hardware. It needs the SoC specification freeze, because the interface is written against the frozen chip specification. For an AI accelerator it needs the accelerator architecture freeze, which sets the control cores, boot and power management the firmware must serve. For an FPGA product it needs device selection, which sets the processor cores, boot and configuration options and security features, and the architecture and pin-out freeze, which fixes the memory map and peripheral set. For an automotive chip it needs the approved safety concept, which allocates safety requirements to software with their integrity levels.
The criteria are an approved software architecture, a hardware-software interface specification baselined with the hardware team under change control, a reviewed security architecture and threat model, and an agreed coding standard with static analysis rules. Six key decisions are frozen here, and the review should give each its own time rather than treat them as attachments to the architecture document.
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