Atlas LHC - Very cool stuff

As I've mentioned before, I cut my testing teeth in high energy physics.  Once again, I'm cleaning out my in box and I found a great article in Evaluation Engineering about the Atlas Experiment for the Large Hadron Collider.  It's chock-full of details about all the different measurements they do, and it sort of made me nostalgic for my grad school days - sort of.  

At any rate, I'm pretty sure the massive detail the test engineers at Atlas have to deal with exceeds the difficulties Intel has when testing it's chips. 

BTW, here's a funny cartoon that came out about the time the LHC went online.  Perversely amusing:  http://xkcd.com/401/

Sifting through my inbox - CAST

So once again I'm going through my Inbox and sorting through months of miscellaneous emails.  I came across this  press release about the Collaborative Alliance for Semiconductor Test (CAST).  here's the key quote:

CAST was formed in 2008 by semiconductor device makers and test industry suppliers to engage in, and resolve, common industry issues related to higher test equipment utilization, lower costs, and greater standardization and return on test-related R&D. 

Sounded interesting, so I went to the website for the group.  They had a little more information there, including slides from a meeting a couple weeks ago.  The list of member companies includes mostly test equipment companies (no surprise there) and big users of semiconductor test equipment (i.e. - Intel).  

I'm all in favor of things like standardization and lower costs, but these sorts of organizations tend to founder unless they are led (at least in the early days) by a strong leader.  I wish them luck.

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After a month+ of not posting, I finally have a little more time to get back to the blog.  I have at least three more items I'll be posting over the next week or so. 

Test Engineer - the musical

I haven't posted in a while - mostly due to tax season, a long project a son needed help with, and of course work keeps me busy.  But here's a funny series of songs about testing.  They were recorded by Martin Rowe,  the senior technical editor at the Test & Measurement World magazine.  Although acoustic blues aren't really to my musical taste, I really appreciated the sentiment.