A new report from the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) shows that investment in
measurement science has and will continue to have a dramatic effect on
innovation, productivity, growth and competitiveness in and among high
technology sectors. Citing the semiconductor industry as a case in
point, the analysis, prepared for NIST by RTI International (RTI),
estimates that the $12 billion spent on advancing measurement
capabilities during the decade beginning in 1996 will have saved that
sector more than $51 billion in scrap and rework costs by 2011 - a net
benefit of approximately $39 billion.
NIST researcher Russell Hajdaj prepares silicon wafers that will be "baked" as part of the processing required for producing new types of semiconductor devices
RTI estimates that for every dollar spent on measurement, the
industry as a whole saw a $3.30 return. (Dollar amounts represent 2006
dollars adjusted for inflation.) The report found that the strategic
focus on measurement technologies pursued by the International
Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (ITRS), a consortium of chip
manufacturers and related stakeholders, benefited both the industry and
consumers through the reduction of defect rates and the miniaturization
of feature size. The advances fostered through this effort, among
others, resulted in lower costs, higher product quality and ever faster
processing speeds.
Measurement technology has allowed the industry to keep up
with “Moore’s Law,” which predicts the
number of transistors per chip will double every two years. By the
early 1990s, the industry realized it would no longer be possible to
satisfy this benchmark without the ability to manipulate
nanoscale-sized features. The report credits the initiative to augment
nanoscale measurement capabilities outlined in the ITRS and its
predecessor as one of the factors that helped manufacturers to increase
the possible number of transistors per chip from 3.1 million in 1996 to
1.7 billion in 2006 while making marked improvements in quality,
design, software and interoperability.
The report underlines the importance of measurement science to
the semiconductor industry and highlights several areas that need
further improvement if the industry is to stay on pace. These areas
include the need for new standards for measuring features lengths at 32
nanometers, new techniques for controlling radio-frequency
electromagnetic energy and high-frequency magnetic fields, and better
chemical and materials standards, as well as new and more accurate
calibration, interoperability and test standards.
RTI gathered the information for this analysis through surveys
and other means. The answered queries accounted for more than 80
percent of the semiconductor industry, and the results were taken to be
representative of the industry as a whole. The results may also be
viewed as conservative in that RTI was able to quantitatively estimate
productivity impacts but not increases in quality.