Tapeout question for the older IC designers around here

Joel Kolstad · 2006-09-13T21:26:56+00:00

According to Wikipedia:GDSII files are considered to be the final output of the IC design cycle and are passed to IC foundries for IC fabrication. These GDSII files were originally produced on magnetic tapes, hence the final moment of the IC design process became known as tapeout.---I always thought it was called "tapeout" because, long ago, you literally taped out your design on rubylith or similar at, e.g., 10x scale before it was photimaged down to the real IC size.Not so?---Joel

Sep 13, 2006 21 Replies

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joseph2k 19 years ago

A smiley upon you for telling the tale on yourself.

JosephKK Gegen dummheit kampfen die Gotter Selbst, vergebens. --Schiller

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Richard Crowley 19 years ago

Never heard of Rubylith, huh? :-)

But even for folk with memories back to the days of "drawing" masks by hand, "tapeout" still refers to handing off the mag tape reel to the mask shop.

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