Differ between GDS and GDSII

[Chenbo Liu]

Hi,

When we send .gdsii to a design-service company for a MPW run, they ask for
.gds.

It's quite confusing, does any expert explain the difference between .gds
and .gdsii?

Thank you very much.

Best,

Chenbo Liu

[Michael Stabenfeldt]

gds, gdsii, gds2, stream are all the same. There are subversions
such as version 3, 4, 5, 6 etc. Most databases are sent out using
basically version 3 data, which all readers I've seen will read.
There is a replacement in the works for gds called oasis, but it
is not quite finished yet, or at least available.

Mike Stabenfeldt/Stabie-Soft

[Lou Raffa]

Chenbo,

GDS was a format written by Calma CAD systems in the 1970's. When
Calma went to double precision they renamed it GDSII. Since then,
GDSII has become the defacto standard format for IC layout. When
translating data to GDSII the three character extension becomes simply
.gds. The format is still officially GDSII.

Lou Raffa
Raytheon

[Andrew Beckett]

Lou,

I hate to disagree, but GDSII was actually the name of a Calma machine,
not the format.

The format itself is actually "STREAM" format, and was the archive format
for the Calma GDSII. So it is actually called "STREAM" format, not GDSII,
but many people refer to it as GDS or GDSII format.

Regards.

Andrew.

--
Andrew Beckett
Senior Technical Leader
Custom IC Solutions
Cadence Design Systems Ltd

[Chenbo Liu]

Thank you for all the response.

So supporting instance is only a feature of stream format, not the
difference between gds and gdsii, am I right?

Best,

Chenbo Liu

"Chenbo Liu" <phil...@icc.sh.cn> wrote in message
news:b3eqag$doc$1...@mail.cn99.com...
: Hi,

:
:

[Andrew Beckett]

Yes. It is a feature of stream format, nothing to do with
a difference between gds and gdsii.

Regards,

Andrew.

--