Computer-aided design: Automating chip layout: New computer-based layout systems are faster than their human counterparts and produce designs that almost match those created manually

Only a small portion of new large-scale and very large-scale integrated-circuit designs are laid out automatically today. But that picture is changing. IC fabrication costs are now so low that the design process offers the only major avenue for reducing IC costs further. IC producers are certain to adopt automated layout tools — sophisticated programs that translate functional specifications into physical descriptions of chips — increasingly over the next few years, and by 1990 layout will probably be predominantly automatic.