Electronic design automation (EDA), also referred to as electronic computer-aided design (ECAD), is a category of software tools for designing electronic systems such as integrated circuits and printed circuit boards. The tools work together in a design flow that chip designers use to design and analyze entire semiconductor chips. Since a modern semiconductor chip can have billions of components, EDA tools are essential for their design; this article in particular describes EDA specifically with respect to integrated circuits (ICs).

The earliest electronic design automation is attributed to IBM with the documentation of its 700 series computers in the 1950s.

IBM has developed one of the earliest computer-aided design (CAD) systems, known as Automated Logic Diagram (ALD), which was originally executed on the IBM 704 and 705 mainframe computers. The design process started with engineers manually drafting logic schematics, which were later transcribed onto standardized templates and converted into punch cards for digital processing.

Although focused on mechanical geometry, General Motors’ DAC-1, built jointly with IBM, was among the earliest interactive, graphics-driven CAD systems and proved the practicality of screen-based editing for complex engineering data, an idea adopted by IC layout tools.

Prior to the development of EDA, integrated circuits were designed by hand and manually laid out. Some advanced shops used geometric software to generate tapes for a Gerber photoplotter, responsible for generating a monochromatic exposure image, but even those copied digital recordings of mechanically drawn components. The process was fundamentally graphic, with the translation from electronics to graphics done manually; the best-known company from this era was Calma, whose GDSII format is still in use today. By the mid-1970s, developers started to automate circuit design in addition to drafting and the first placement and routing tools were developed; as this occurred, the proceedings of the Design Automation Conference catalogued the large majority of the developments of the time.

Calma’s Graphic Design System (GDS, 1971) and its 32-bit successor GDSII (1978) let engineers digitise and edit full-chip layouts on minicomputers; the accompanying GDSII Stream file became the de-facto mask exchange standard and is still recognised in modern design flows.

The next era began following the publication of "Introduction to VLSI Systems" by Carver Mead and Lynn Conway in 1980, and is considered the standard textbook for chip design. The result was an increase in the complexity of the chips that could be designed, with improved access to design verification tools that used logic simulation. The chips were easier to lay out and more likely to function correctly, since their designs could be simulated more thoroughly prior to construction. Although the languages and tools have evolved, this general approach of specifying the desired behavior in a textual programming language and letting the tools derive the detailed physical design remains the basis of digital IC design today.

The earliest EDA tools were produced academically. One of the most famous was the "Berkeley VLSI Tools Tarball", a set of UNIX utilities used to design early VLSI systems. Widely used were the Espresso heuristic logic minimizer, responsible for circuit complexity reductions and Magic, a computer-aided design platform. Another crucial development was the formation of MOSIS, a consortium of universities and fabricators that developed an inexpensive way to train student chip designers by producing real integrated circuits. The basic concept was to use reliable, low-cost, relatively low-technology IC processes and pack a large number of projects per wafer, with several copies of chips from each project remaining preserved. Cooperating fabricators either donated the processed wafers or sold them at cost, as they saw the program as helpful to their own long-term growth.