Power Virus & Thermal Test: Review Checklist

Review checklist

Review Checklist for Power Virus & Thermal Test centers on peak power excursion, thermal throttle duty cycle, and reliability margin. The objective is to connect profiler evidence to root-cause mechanism and release-safe action.

• Workload scope and target KPI are explicitly documented.

• Profiler + counter evidence is reproducible with revision tags.

• Bottleneck classification is proved with mechanism-level traces.

• Mitigation includes owner, blast radius, and rollback criteria.

• End-to-end benchmark matrix confirms closure.

• Owners signed: silicon validation lead, power architect, reliability owner.

Signoff ownership

GPU OWNERSHIP LAYERS — Power Virus & Thermal Test

artifact area     owner
----------------  ----------------------------
architecture    silicon validation lead
RTL/microarch   power architect
software/tools  reliability owner

Rule: each metric needs a named owner before signoff.

GPU deep dive

Performance claims need verification-grade reproducibility, not one-off profiler screenshots.

Concept diagram

PERF VERIFICATION LOOP

benchmark -> profile -> optimize -> verify correctness -> regress

Metric graph

RELEASE READINESS

benchmarks stable     █████████
accuracy gates pass   ████████
perf regressions open ███

Reports and artifacts

• golden benchmark suite

• deterministic replay log

• perf regression dashboard

• accuracy/perf gate status

Mini case study

A kernel passed microbenchmarks but failed production SLA due to host-device sync overhead hidden from isolated tests.

Debug branches

• Enforce end-to-end benchmarks alongside kernels

• Pair every speedup with accuracy diff checks

• Promote only reproducible profiler baselines

Senior review question

Ask: which metric and benchmark pairing proves this topic is truly closed in production context?

Key takeaways

• Always pair micro-kernel metrics with end-to-end workload impact.

• Lock toolchain, driver, and launch metadata before comparing performance results.

Common pitfalls

• Optimizing occupancy without checking memory-system saturation.

• Comparing profiler captures from different driver or compiler builds.

• Declaring wins without reproducible accuracy and performance gates.

Review checklist explanation

A checklist is not bureaucracy here; it is how GPU teams avoid confusing local wins with product wins. Every signoff item should protect against a known class of false confidence.

For Power Virus & Thermal Test, the minimum checklist is workload scope, peak power excursion, thermal throttle duty cycle, and reliability margin, artifact evidence (stress test log, thermal throttle timeline, and guardband validation report), bottleneck classification, owner, rollback path, and full matrix validation.

If the change affects architecture or RTL, include correctness and PPA evidence. If it affects compiler/runtime policy, include compatibility and deployment evidence. If it affects physical design, include timing, IR, thermal, and observability evidence.