In short
Firmware readiness means the bring-up firmware, drivers and SDK are ready on the day silicon samples arrive. It fails when the silicon date moves and the firmware plan does not: today that news takes two to four weeks to reach the firmware team. The fix is to keep silicon and firmware milestones in one record, so one moves the other.
Why do firmware and silicon drift apart?
They are planned by different teams, in different tools, on different cadences. The silicon team works to tape-out and samples; the firmware team works in sprints. When the samples date moves, the silicon team knows that day. The firmware plan often goes on working to the old date for weeks.
Then silicon arrives and the firmware team is mid-sprint on something else — or silicon is late and firmware was finished weeks early at the expense of other work.
What has to be ready, and when?
Four things, each with a different customer:
- Bring-up firmware: on the bench the day samples arrive.
- Drivers: ready for system integration.
- Emulation and FPGA prototypes: firmware running before silicon exists, to find problems early.
- The customer SDK: ready when the customer is, with their name on the date.
What about AI coding agents?
A typical firmware organisation now runs dozens of AI coding agents, and they ship a great deal of code. None of them reports to the release date. Each needs an identity, a scope and a place in the plan, so that its commitments are held to the same date as the engineers'.
How do you keep them aligned?
Put the silicon milestone and the firmware milestones in the same record. When samples move, every dependent firmware date moves with it and its owner is told the same hour. Tymeline re-sequences the bring-up sprint and flags the customer SDK date for the firmware lead to approve.