SPIRE — The state-of-the-art in semiconductor bolometers for astronomy

SPIRE is one of three instruments on the Herschel Space Observatory. The bolometer arrays it contains are among the best understood and well characterized of any sub-mm astronomy instrument to date, and represent the state-of-the-art for this technology. The results from years of testing on the ground have shown them to be extremely stable and to possess simple behavior. We describe the results from these tests and show that under the stable conditions expected in flight, this should enable physical models to be used in their calibration, in contrast to previous instruments.