A defensible outcome is not a vote: it is a decision with an owner, a condition, and an expiry. For this scenario the close sounds like this: grant a conditional waiver for this tape-out only, owned by the design lead, conditional on qualification logic that holds the capture until the bus is stable plus a new assertion proving bus stability across destination sampling, reviewed before the signoff gate. The waiver expires at the next RTL change touching the interface or the bus, and the residual risk is stated in writing: silent datapath corruption if software writes the bus during operation and the qualification logic is bypassed or wrong.
Element | What it proves about you |
|---|---|
Named owner | You know waivers are accountability, not paperwork. |
Evidence condition | You trade adjectives for checks. |
Expiry | You know intent rots: today's proof does not cover tomorrow's ECO. |
Stated residual risk | You communicate risk instead of burying it, which is what Signoff Readiness demands. |
Then price the alternative fairly: qualifying the capture or adding a handshake removes the risk class entirely at the cost of an RTL edit and its regression. Recommend the conditional waiver only because the proof path fits the two-week window; recommend the structural fix as the follow-up. An interviewer who pushes, "but tape-out is Friday", is retesting the schedule bar: repeat that urgency schedules work, it does not create evidence.
Owner, evidence condition, expiry, and residual risk stated in writing. A waiver missing any one of them is an opinion with a signature.