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| Original author(s) | John K. Ousterhout, Gordon T. Hamachi, Robert N. Mayo, Walter S. Scott, George S. Taylor |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Magic Development Team |
| Initial release | April 1983 |
| Stable release | 8.3.479
/ May 8, 2024 |
| Repository | https://github.com/RTimothyEdwards/magic |
| Written in | C |
| Operating system | Linux |
| Available in | English |
| Type | Electronic design automation |
| License | BSD license[1] |
| Website | opencircuitdesign |
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Magic is an electronic design automation (EDA) layout tool for very-large-scale integration (VLSI) integrated circuit (IC) originally written by John Ousterhout and his graduate students at UC Berkeley. Work began on the project in February 1983. A primitive version was operational by April 1983,[2] when Joan Pendleton, Shing Kong and other graduate student chip designers suffered through many fast revisions devised to meet their needs in designing the SOAR CPU chip, a follow-on to Berkeley RISC.
Fearing that Ousterhout was going to propose another name that started with "C" to match his previous projects Cm*, Caesar, and Crystal, Gordon Hamachi proposed the name Magic because he liked the idea of being able to say that people used magic to design chips. The rest of the development team enthusiastically agreed to this proposal after he devised the backronym Manhattan Artwork Generator for Integrated Circuits. The Magic software developers called themselves magicians, while the chip designers were Magic users.
As free and open-source software, subject to the requirements of the BSD license, Magic continues to be popular because it is easy to use and easy to expand for specialized tasks.