So let's get back to the point and let me ask a silly question as to what anyone exactly means with "tape out".
"tape out" can mean one of two things depending on your viewpoint and where you are.
1) sending off of the design to be fabricated
2) sending of design from fracture to actual mask production.
In the modern semi industry these are generally the steps from design completion to actual wafer processing:
A) Final design rule checks
B) Tape In (though some can refer to it as tape out)- Sending of first layer to "fracture". Fracture is basically the computational process by which a layer of the CAD based "mask set" is computationally modified to fit within the optical realities of modern day lithography. This includes OPC, etc. Can be fairly time consuming. Most semiconductor manufactures tend to have a fairly large computational pool. These systems are in the range of the Top500 supercomputer lists - ie large.
C) Tape Out - end result of "fracture" of mask layer sent to mask manufacturing facility. Most large semi companies have their own internal mask facilities, smaller ones may farm this out.
D) first lithography layer in process.
So someone can refer to "tape out" as either tape-in or as the actual tape-out. Originally when all these chips were layed out on effectively plastic/mylar sheeting with actual tape, tape-out refered to the point as which the last piece of tape was applied and the whole thing was taken to be photographically shrunk onto the mask sets.
