Traditional one-piece, clamshell-design test sockets are useful diagnostic tools for establishing or evaluating device functionality. However, they tend to be less satisfactory for validating fine-pitch packages such as ball grid array (BGA) and land grid array (LGA), which are gaining popularity for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and programmable logic devices (PLDs) as the trend toward convergence in cell phones and other portable devices……