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.
