NEMS: nanoelectromechanical system. A chip with moving parts, or one with parts through which something other than electric current moves. They used to be microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), but they’ve been on a diet.

PDS: placement-driven synthesis. A design method that lets you specify the behavior of a block of circuitry and translates that into a detailed circuit plan, right down to the size of the parts of the individual transistors. It uses a bunch of nifty techniques, including placement, which figures out the best route for the circuit’s wiring to minimize how long it takes a signal to get where it needs to go on the chip.

PECL: positive emitter-coupled logic. A way of constructing logic circuits so that they operate faster, but at the expense of continuously draining power. PECL is just ECL operated between positive voltage and ground, in contrast to negative voltage and ground. Another ECL variation is LVPECL (which we dearly wish were pronounced “love peckle”), or low-voltage PECL, a PECL powered from a 3.3-volt power supply. Though CMOS is the logic circuit technology of choice these days, PECLs can still be found transmitting clock signals on chips and sending data down the bus in computers.

QDIP: quantum-dot infrared photodetector. An IR detector noted for its high temporal resolution and low noise-equivalent temperature difference (NETD), which is a measure of sensitivity. That would seem to make QDIPs good for use in night-vision goggles and other cool stuff, except that they have to be frozen to work well.

RAS: reusable asset specification. The recycling rules for software engineering. It defines a standard way to package pieces of code so that they can easily be reused. RAS is part of a movement in software design called asset-based development (ABD), in which you keep software reuse in mind as you build a system. Elsewhere RAS means reliability, availability, serviceability, a perfectly sensible set of system performance parameters.

SED: surface-conduction electron-emitter display. That should be SCEED, right? We thought so. Normally we disdain cheating, but on the other hand we admire the chutzpah required to simply discard 40 percent of your word count to get to a marketable acronym. SEDs are flat-panel displays where each pixel in the display is like a miniature cathode-ray tube. They’re said to have the brightness and contrast of CRTs but to use one-third less power than plasma TVs. The developers are having a devil of a time commercializing SEDs, by the way. SEDs are similar to field-emission displays (FEDs), which you can’t buy yet either.

SIMOX: separation by implantation of oxygen. A means of producing SOI (silicon-on-insulator) wafers. First you implant oxygen beneath the surface of a silicon wafer. Then you cook the wafer until an insulating oxide layer forms beneath the surface of the silicon. Besides making attractive trivets, SOI wafers let transistors run faster and consume less power, because the insulation layer reduces the amount of charge the transistor needs to move in order to switch and it blocks leaking current.

STRIFE: stress plus life (testing). A portmanteau posing as an acronym—there’s no reason for this word to be in all capital letters other than the perversity of whoever minted it. We’re fond of it anyway, because it actually means what it says.

TCAM: ternary content-addressable memory. Say you are looking for the letter Q in a computer memory. If the memory is plain old random-access memory (RAM), you have to check each address one at a time to see if the binary equivalent, 01010001, is hiding there. The same process in a CAM is much faster because it lets you look for a match by reading the entire contents of the memory all at once. CAM is great for things like Internet packet routing and pattern recognition. TCAM takes it to another level by letting you search for 010100XX—or P, Q, R, and S—at the same time.

TLA: What do the following have in common? ATM, VCR, IBM, LSI, GPS, SOI, BER, DVD, RCA, QAM, SDI. Yup. Every last one of them is a three-letter acronym. Two letters are rarely enough. And four letters or more give people the inexplicable urge to try to pronounce them, even if they shouldn’t. Thus, the ­electronics industry’s penchant for acronyms is so powerful it has its own acronym.

TTL: This used to mean transistor-transistor logic, a way of designing logic ICs without diodes, which took up too much space on the chip. Now that most logic chips are built using CMOS technology, TTL is more likely to refer to time to live, a measure of how long data are allowed to bounce around in a computer network before they get deleted. TTL keeps networks from becoming clogged up with undeliverable data packets.

UTOPIA: universal test and operations physical interface for asynchronous transfer mode. Basically, an interface that gives test equipment access to a particular kind of data network. Kudos for reaching past five letters, and applause for the ­matryoshka action of squeezing ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) into the final A. But seriously, if this is your idea of utopia, you really, really need to get out more.

VCSEL: vertical-cavity surface-emitting laser. A semiconductor laser diode that emits light from the top surface of a chip. That’s in contrast to most laser chips, which are edge-emitting and have a horizontal cavity. Because the latter were invented first, they are usually just called “lasers” instead of HCEELs.

WAF: wife acceptance factor, wife approval factor. A product feature or modification sufficiently appealing to women that they will permit their husbands to buy the product. An example is the ability of Sony’s PlayStation Portable to play children’s movies as well as Grand Theft Auto.