Technical Activities
The semiconductor electronics industry is outstripping the measurement capability needed for maintaining and improving U.S. international competitiveness. Important factors affected include product performance, price, quality, compatibility, and time to market. The Semiconductor Electronics Division provides the measurement capability needed to support the efforts of U.S. industry to improve its competitiveness. In order to support this effort, the Division also engages in technology development and fundamental research, making the findings available to industry.
The Division focuses the largest part of its resources on the development and delivery of measurement capability for two principal reasons: measurement capability has a very high impact on U.S. industry because it helps manufacturers address many of the challenges they face in realizing competitive products in the marketplace, and NIST is the official lead U.S. Government agency for measurements.
The Division focuses on developing measurement capability that is beyond the reach of the broad range of individual companies. Companies seek NIST's help for several reasons:
- The companies need NIST's special technical capability for measurement development.
- The companies need NIST's acknowledged impartiality for diagnosing a measurement problem affecting the industry broadly or for achieving adoption of a solution across the industry.
- The companies cannot develop the measurement capability needed by the industry broadly because they cannot individually capture the returns of the cost of development.
- Industry's quality standards require that key measurements be traceable to the national measurement reference standards that NIST maintains. This is a requirement of growing importance in export markets.