1. Purpose of the gate
The array sizes to build first, the design kit scope, the pricing and engineering charge model, cost and schedule are agreed between the business and engineering, and development of the platform is committed.
The platform plan releases most of the investment in the base array: design, masks for the base layers, wafers for the first bank, validation vehicles and qualification. It is recovered only as customer devices are won and shipped, so the plan must show how many devices are needed and how they will be found.
The gate also agrees the pricing and engineering charge model, which every customer quotation will be built from. It must reflect the real cost of implementing a customer design, ordering custom masks, finishing banked wafers and testing parts, and it must be simple enough for business development to quote quickly, since short turnaround starts with a quick quotation.
Reviewers look hard at what is not in the plan. Common gaps are the customer design service staff, the cost of carrying the wafer bank, design kit maintenance, and the work to update the kit after silicon correlation.
The plan depends on decisions frozen at the same time, such as the layer split. The review checks that cost and schedule are consistent with the frozen architecture.
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