Block Budget Contracts: Review Checklist

Review checklist

Review Checklist for Block Budget Contracts focuses on timing/power/area budget adherence at tape-in gates. The goal is to map symptoms to boundary contracts, owner actions, and regression-proof closure.

• Baseline manifest and revision are explicit.

• Boundary contracts for this topic are current and approved.

• Ownership map covers all open issues.

• Focused and full regression evidence both exist.

• Residual risks are either closed or bounded via waiver policy.

• Owners signed: SoC architect, block owner, program lead.

Signoff ownership

OWNERSHIP MAP — Block Budget Contracts

artifact             owner
-----------------    -----------------
primary owner     SoC architect
co-owner          block owner
review owner      program lead

No top-level issue should remain ownerless beyond one review cycle.

SoC deep dive

Budget and ownership contracts are technical artifacts, not PM slides.

Concept diagram

HIERARCHY CONTRACT FLOW
partition -> block budget -> owner signoff -> integration checkpoint

Metric graph

BUDGET RISK TREND
open risks ████████
owned fixes ███████
unowned risks ██

Reports and artifacts

• budget delta dashboard

• ownership matrix

• milestone health report

• risk register

Mini case study

A timing overrun was solved only after budget ownership moved from shared to single-threaded.

Debug branches

• Validate contract revision

• Check owner signatures

• Audit milestone readiness

Senior review question

Ask: what baseline, owner, and artifact prove this topic is truly closed?

Key takeaways

• State baseline manifest and owner with every closure metric.

• Run cross-domain regression after every top-level fix.

Common pitfalls

• Comparing results across different manifests.

• Unowned issues slipping through review cycles.

• Waiving risks without expiry and validation plan.

Principal SoC review addendum

Chip closure starts with explicit budget contracts per block; integration fails when local optimizations violate global top-level constraints.

Metric: timing/power/area budget adherence at tape-in gates