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MEMS Measurement Standards

Consistent with a move towards standards in MEMS, NIST has released two reference chips that fabs can use to cross-check their measurement techniques. There are several critical parameters unique to MEMS, and five of them are captured by this 5-in-1 reference. NIST has done its own measurements, and the idea is to replicate the results they got. The chips are available for sale ($1735), along with the results for comparison.

The five tests covered are:

Building Better Wizards

Wizards are becoming more and more prevalent. Lest you’re concerned that Dumbledore’s relatives are coming to exact revenge, fear not: we speak here of wizards in the GUI (as opposed to gooey) sense. Yes, there are bastions of holdouts that cling to command line interfaces as a measure of their hacker bona fides, but there are solid reasons to like a well-designed wizard.

And “well-designed” is the operative phrase here. You may think of a wizard as no more than a way to simplify processes that could just as effectively be … Read More → "Building Better Wizards"

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