

Recollections of Early Chip Development at Intel (2001) [pdf] - wkoszek
http://lark.tu-sofia.bg/ntt/eusku/readings/art_1.pdf

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krupan
I was hoping they would explain where the term "tape out" came from. I always
thought it was because they copied the digital form of the design onto
magnetic tape and shipped it off to the manufacturer, but nobody has been able
to authoritatively confirm or deny that for me.

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imr
That is what I have always heard in engineering school. FTP transfers replaced
the magnetic tape.

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etep
Figure 3, hand drawn cell layout on Mylar. Nice.

Design automation begins: By 1974, the result was being digitized on a Calma
GDS I

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AnonNo15
Amazingly fascinating! Interesting how this process works in modern era.

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wkoszek
Nowadays it's much more complex and very much like software. Things got very
complex, so a lot of things which Intel guys did by hand is nowadays done by a
design program. For example: they devote a lot of time to describe how layout
was done by hand. Right now you nearly never draw new rectangles of metal
layer to build gates. Big fabs like TSMC will give you the library of cells
which they know they can product. You'll tie it in your EDA VLSI software and
you'll basically get a netlist from a Verilog simulator. And from there you'll
do more via auto-placement for highly repeatable parts, and you'll do
placement by hand for things you really care about. And you're assisted by
software doing design checks all the way from design to manufacturing.

