Hello all, Sorry, I'm still a bit confused with what is required to verify for the mock tapeout. The slides in Meetup11 (I couldn't find the recording, by the way) mention dummy blocks, but what does this mean? magic dummies? xschem dummies? what would be the minimal dummy setup to verify this point? we have our core design laid out, but not all the pins are connected to it. Would this core and it connections to its pins be enough for this step?

You can see a post right above yours from someone who has completed this. The dummy block is something that has all the pins of your design, but not the final circuit. What you describe as your core and its pin connections will be OK for this.