What is the Physical Design? What are the various steps included in the whole process?

"Physical Design" includes all the tasks needed to build a silicon chip from design netlist to final GDSII layout.

Compared to design capture, simulation, and logic synthesis (which are called front-end activities), physical design is referred to as back-end work.

In other words, physical design covers the tasks necessary to turn the design from a logic entity into a physical entity. It starts from the netlist, which is generated from the logic synthesis. However, the physical design can also include the task of RTL logic synthesis since there is an ever-increasing tie between the logic synthesis and the physical layout. The term physical synthesis reflects this fact.

The list below shows roughly the major tasks in the physical design domain:

1. Logic synthesis
2. DFT insertion
3. Electric rules check (ERC) on gate-level netlist
4. Floorplan
5. Die size
6. I/O structure
7. Design partition
8. Macro placement
9. Power distribution structure
10. Clock distribution structure
11. Preliminary check
12. IR drop
13. ESD
14. EM
15. Place and route
16. Parasitic extraction and reduction
17. SDF generation
18. Various checks
19. Static timing analysis
20. Cross talk analysis
21. IR drop analysis
22. Electron migration analysis
23. Gate oxide integrity check
24. ESD/latch-up check
25. Efuse check
26. Antenna check
27. Final layout generation
28. Manufacturing rule check, LVS check
29. Pattern generation