MEMS oscillators offer much better quality and reliability. These qualities are very important; not only are company reputations at stake, but re-work can be costly and time consuming. Moreover, systems which are deployed outdoors and exposed to environmental stresses must be especially robust. Quartz resonators, while a mature technology, involve a rather complicated manufacturing process in which each individual resonator is tuned to the desired frequency, usually by ablating the metal electrode with an ion beam. This process, which occurs before the crystal is encapsulated, is susceptible to contamination. Because of this process and other complexities with quartz manufacturing, the Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) of quartz can be as low as 14 to 38 million hours with Defective Parts Per Million (DPPM) as high as 50 for the best quartz manufacturers and as high as 150 for tier 2 quartz suppliers. By contrast, MEMS manufacturers use standard semiconductor batch mode techniques and the MEMS is vacuum sealed with an Epi-Seal™ process to ensure the structure is completely encapsulated and free from contamination. As a result, the DPPM and MTBF of SiTime oscillators are about 30 times better than quartz, providing a very reliable technology platform which can endure severe environmental stresses and provide a high quality product for the end user.