Tapeout
Once a chip design is complete, it is taped out for manufacturing. This means sending the GDS2 files to the foundry.
The term “tape out” was coined in 70’s. There are 2 theories from where the name comes from:
- Early ICs were made in a very similar process to PCBs, where sticky tape was used to create the shapes, followed by shrinking the design down with an optical photograpy process.
- ASIC design files were stored on magnetic tape. The event of carrying out the tape to the foundry was thus called “tape out”.
I now have pretty good evidence that #1 is the correct answer, as I’ve spoken to people who were designing chips in the early days of VLSI and they used paper tape before magnetic tape.
I think the reason #2 got popular was because it was described this way in an influential (and highly recommended book): CMOS/VLSI design by Weste & Harris.
Our tapeouts
So far we have made 4 tapeouts:
Course feedback
Don't think twice about taking this course, It uses a unique method, you get to do stuff yourself and learn by playing around. Getting through this course and designing my own ASICs was the greatest experience of my life.