In electronics and photonics design, tape-out or tapeout is the final stage of the design process for integrated circuits or printed circuit boards before they are sent for manufacturing. The tapeout is specifically the point at which the graphic for the photomask of the circuit is sent to the fabrication facility. The name originates from the use of magnetic tape to send the data to the manufacturing facility.
Procedures involved
The term tapeout currently is used to describe the creation of the photomask itself from the final approved electronic CAD file. Designers may use this term to refer to the writing of the final file to disk or CD and its subsequent transmission to the semiconductor foundry; however, in current practice, the foundry will perform checks and make modifications to the mask design specific to the manufacturing process before actual tapeout. These modifications of the mask data include:
- Chip finishing which includes custom designations and structures to improve manufacturability of the layout. Examples of the latter are a seal ring and filler structures.
- Producing a reticle layout with test patterns and alignment marks.
A synonym used at IBM is RIT (release interface tape). IBM differentiates between RIT-A for the non-metallic structures and RIT-B for the metal layers.
A synonym used at Texas Instruments is PG (pattern generation).
See also
- Mask data preparation
- Semiconductor fabrication
- GDSII