Integrated Circuit (IC) design created by various CAD programs; contains information about the layout of a circuit, including the layers, geometric shapes, and text labels; used as a standard interchange format between IC design applications.

GDS files are created in the GDS II format, which was originally developed by Calma. For this reason, they are sometimes referred to as Calma streams. The GDS file format is now owned and maintained by Cadence Design Systems.