They will need to have atleast few chips to test the chip itself. They must get a lot data from the actual chip - how can they ship a product to end-user that includes a chip that has only been simulated?
If they don't have chips to test yet, they will be late. Just like Bitfurys chip differed from the simulations kinda lot. Same with BFL. How would it be different with KNC? Really?
They can test the chips at this point if they want too. They would know if there was a problem by now.