1. Purpose and scope
This is the stage where the system first exists as a physical object. Engineering prototypes, often called the engineering validation test (EVT) build, are assembled from the released boards and prototype enclosure parts, powered up, and brought up step by step: power rails, clocks and reset, the boot chain, memory, interfaces, firmware, the operating system and finally the system's use cases end to end. Every failure has to be traced to its cause, which may be a board fault, a chip erratum, a firmware or software bug, a mechanical clash or an assembly defect.
The stage has a second purpose: to decide what will be built for design validation. Once the main functions work and the design issues found are fixed or planned, the hardware design, enclosure and main software features are frozen at System design freeze, the second technical readiness review. After that gate, changes need an approved change request with their effect on hardware, software, certification and cost stated, and production tooling for the enclosure can be released.
In scope: the EVT build, bring-up, integration debug, the integration issue log, silicon errata and workarounds, the firmware bring-up report, correlation with the prototypes, the validation plan, the design changes for the next build, the manufacturing test strategy, enclosure tooling release and the design freeze. Out of scope: formal validation against the requirements, which is done on the DVT build in Design Validation.
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