Budgets decay. Every block spends a little more than planned, every estimate sharpens upward, and without governance the project discovers at tapeout that the die, the package and the schedule no longer agree. This topic teaches the machinery that stops that: budget tables with named owners, margin tracked as it burns down, a defined escalation when a budget breaks, and a change process that keeps the books balanced. For the negotiation side see Budget Negotiation; for signoff criteria see Architecture Signoff.

Suggested order: top to bottom. Write the contract, track it, then change it by the rules. This topic assumes at least one budget topic read first; its examples draw on area, power and bandwidth alike.