TABLE OF CONTENTS Here's what you're going to see in this chapter:
How to prepare your final data for the mask-makers
Standard formats most people use
How to communicate units along with the numbers
Why you suddenly have a drawing 200 times too big
Why your connections suddenly disconnect in translation
What really determines your drawing resolution
Some methods and new technology that help with these problems
How your data points finally become lines and shapes
Why you should understand data formats
We have finally drawn every last piece of our layout. We have run our DRC's and our LVS's. We've done our chip size checks with bonds and everything. We spent months and months, burned the candles at several ends. We are now at the point where we can say we are finished. It's ready to go. It's done.
Depending on the tool we have been using, we now typically convert our layout database into a format that the mask-making house can read. We do not ship out our tool data as is.
There are two prevalent data formats you could use. One is called CIF, CalTech Intermediate Format. CIF is not used as much as the more popular format, called GDSII Stream Format. GDSII was originally invented back in the late 70's, early 80's by the Calma Corporation, now owned by the Cadence Corporation. GDSII is the industry standard database format...
