Russia Wants To Replace US Computer Chips With Local Processors

An anonymous reader writes with this news from Tass: Russia's Industry and Trade Ministry plans to replace U.S. microchips (Intel and AMD), used in government's computers, with domestically-produced micro Baikal processors in a project worth dozens of millions of dollars, business daily Kommersant reported Thursday. The article is fairly thin, but does add a bit more detail: "The Baikal micro processor will be designed by a unit of T-Platforms, a producer of supercomputers, next year, with support from state defense conglomerate Rostec and co-financing by state-run technological giant Rosnano. The first products will be Baikal M and M/S chips, designed on the basis of 64-bit nucleus Cortex A-57 made by UK company ARM, with frequency of 2 gigahertz for personal computers and micro servers."

Comments

Business sells to bad government, there is a cost!

[erroneus]

Been saying this for years now since the earliest reports of NSA spying and the cooperation of technology companies came out. Most people kept saying it was nonsense that global trust in US technology can never be lost if only because ours is "the best" and is too expensive to replace. Seems to me that's not a deciding factor these days. The bad behaving US government is causing real harm to business now. As soon as business begins to realize how toxic that relationship is, they will stop doing it. But then again, we still have lots of companies trying to send (outsource) tech to China... China who has a long history of taking the tech and spinning it off on their own. Hoy myopic can they be?

Re:Good luck with that

[ruir]

Are they? 99.9999% of governments do not understand their infrastructure security model revolving about using foreign hardware and processors is not a very bright idea.

Re:I wonder what their reasoning is...?

[erroneus]

Not paying attention? Russia is also breaking free of the petro-dollar monopoly. You may not think much of it, but the fact has been that all oil and gas has been traded in US dollars around the globe. That has been one of the reasons US dollars have maintained any value at all. With so much of the US production and even many services going overseas, we simply aren't producing anything here. At least not the way we once did and still can.

There are nations interested in de-Americanizing the world. I can't say I blame them right now. But as things fail to turn around or get corrected, we in the US are going feel the hurt in ways which are painful to imagine.

Re:It will be interesting to see how good these ch

[Trepidity]

That might not be a bad target. The Russian space program has a history of reliable but fairly conservative designs, e.g. the Soyuz has a solid multi-decade track record. Versus the American space program, which goes for more cutting-edge stuff like the Space Shuttle, but has more reliability problems.

Re:Good luck with that

[Anonymous Coward]

Better than revolving their economy around selling things they can find in other people's ground, eh, America?

Seriously, though, Russia's biggest mistake in the past 100 years was Khrushchev's decision to pursue a mission of copying the West rather than developing independently of the West. Lenin was a genius and Stalin was pure evil, but they (especially Stalin) were technocratically brilliant.

Re:It will be interesting to see how good these ch

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Russian space program has a history of reliable but fairly conservative designs, e.g. the Soyuz has a solid multi-decade track record.

The Soyuz had two loss of crew accidents in 120 flights. And ten more mission failures.

Shuttle had two loss of crew accidents in 135 flights. And no extra mission failures.

I fail to see the reliability advantage of the Soyuz.

Re:Lets Get Real

[Luckyo]

When it came to bleeding edge military technology, USSR was top notch. Don't believe the bullshit propaganda on this one. I recommend starting looking on documentaries made around 1995-2000 many of which can be found on youtube. Back then Russia was opening up to the West and a lot of massive technological marvels that they produced were first seen by the West.

To quote a Lockheed Martin head engineer of space engine program after seeing the test firing of Soviet closed circuit engine which he flat out refused to believe to be possible until that firing:

"Seeing this made us ask some very uncomfortable questions about our research and development processes".

Just like USSR was behind in some things, USA was behind in some other things. And USSR's solution to many parts where it was behind were stunningly brilliant. For example nearly fully automated long range aircraft that was MiG-25 was massively automated and computerized. On vacuum tubes. US and Japanese specialists didn't believe it when they got the thing from Belenko, and there were several documentaries covering the plane and Belenko's case which had some very interesting talking points from engineers working on it.

And after Cold War ended, when asked why, the explanation was that vacuum tubes actually survived extreme conditions of extreme altitude and extreme speed flight much better than transistors, and that it was more efficient to code around their slowness than to burden the aircraft with climate control systems for transistor based computers.

Assuming people like that won't make any breakthroughs is simply stupid.

Re:I wonder what their reasoning is...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not paying attention? Russia is also breaking free of the petro-dollar monopoly. You may not think much of it, but the fact has been that all oil and gas has been traded in US dollars around the globe. That has been one of the reasons US dollars have maintained any value at all. With so much of the US production and even many services going overseas, we simply aren't producing anything here. At least not the way we once did and still can.

There are nations interested in de-Americanizing the world. I can't say I blame them right now. But as things fail to turn around or get corrected, we in the US are going feel the hurt in ways which are painful to imagine.

I know this is a favorite conspiracy among internet commenters for whatever reason, but the petrodollar conspiracy is a myth. The US dollar has value because it is legal tender in the worlds largest economy. The United States is also the worlds largest manufacturer, surpassing the next five manufacturers combined in total output. It also requires these goods to be sold in dollars. Domestically, the United States also has the largest capital holdings in the world, estimated to be valued in hundreds of trillions of dollars. Since the dollar is legal tender, these capital assets are also valued and traded in dollars. It is also the world's historically most stable currency, making it very attractive for sovereign reserve funds.

Source: I'm taking honors economics in high school right now.

Re:Good luck with that

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

Who is going to slap an embargo on them? Not the UN, Russia is a permanent member of the Security Council. I can't imagine China would vote for that either.
What percentage of processors are made in (mainland) China?

Re:It will be interesting to see how good these ch

[PolygamousRanchKid]

I fail to see the reliability advantage of the Soyuz.

The Soyuz can still take you into space. The Space Shuttle can't.

That's infinitely more reliable.

Re:Good luck with that

[Mal-2]

The Russians have cloned foreign hardware before, with varying degrees of success. While it will always be one or two generations behind (because you can't reasonably clone something not yet released), their past history would indicate that these will actually work, if they are willing to commit the necessary resources. With there being less and less difference between generations lately, cloning now makes more sense than it did ten years ago. ARM processors themselves were originally cobbled together by a team with plenty of talent but little financial backing, so who's to say a clone can't be done under the same conditions?

No, that means it is still being used

[Sycraft-fu]

The shuttles could still be made/maintained/used. They aren't, but that is a financial and political decision. It isn't as though they reached a magic expiration date and crumbled to dust. A new one could be built and used, no problem, if there was the money and will to do so.

The GPs point stands.

Re:No, that means it is still being used

[kirovs]

No, it does not. He falls prey to conformational bias. First the difference in number of flights (135 vs 120) is insignificant. Second, first Souyz flew in 1966 (or 1967, don't remember). It did that almost 15 years before the first shuttle flight. Therefore it had to use older technology and do so without much of the experience, technology and knowledge that the designers of the shuttle had. Perhaps it is not coincidence that the 2 losses Souyz had were before the shuttle even took off. Compare this to the shuttle failures. I think that Souyz is more reliable than the shuttle, but I admit that this is opinion rather than data supported hypothesis since data points are few and unreliable (near misses).

Re:No, that means it is still being used

[avmich]

We're safely away from the original topic, so anything flies. Including Soyuz and Shuttle.

When you're talking about reliability of these two crafts, you may talk about "design reliability" or "device reliability". Which design is more reliable? Well, Shuttle has advantage of hindsight, some less drastic loads, and numerically - more flights accomplished. Soyuz has advantage of last death 33 years ago - and of design being constantly tweaked. I.e., Discovery and Atlantis were physically created in 1980-s, way before Challenger catastrophe, with knowledge available then. Granted, Shuttle had advantage of vastly more resources spent on design and overall architecture was created some 10 years after that for Soyuz. Yet Discovery and Atlantis had - not all, but many - designs frozen in 1980.

Of course, some other systems were constantly upgraded until the end of the program.

Soyuz also has some architectural decision unchangeable - e.g., infamous capsule diameter. Yet other things - including even small increases in that diameter in specific places to allow taller crew onboard - kept changing - they are still changing. Just like Shuttle, Soyuz had avionics upgrades. Unlike Shuttle - because Soyuz is more modular - Soyuz had changes in Orbital module (reflected in mass and size) and in Propulsion unit (e.g., unified fuel storage system). If we assume that Soyuz landing - for example - is simpler, has less failure modes than Shuttle - then it's easier to make it safer, everything else being equal, which of course it isn't.

We should admit that Soyuz manufacturer has greater flexibility in changing Soyuz for next flight. For example, if a critical flaw - as it was after Soyuz-11 - is found, the next flight can be delayed and the craft substantially redesigned - as Soyuz-T was born. Not so with Shuttles - after Challenger NASA still had 3 units, which were substantially made the same, and couldn't recreate - or reassemble - them anew. In other words, we can argue that Shuttle reliability is more frozen when a Shuttle is assembled, while Soyuz is assembled for each flight - and for each flight there is an opportunity to learn from previous mistakes.

Not that it's only beneficial to Soyuz. Shuttle has the benefit of being tested in actual flight - the same craft flies again and again. Soyuz maker can't easily prevent problems related to a particular vehicle - since that vehicle flies only once - it only can learn from previous flights and improve the next one. But here we have more opportunities for iterations - that's perhaps why Soyuz last death was in 1971, and why Soyuz maker is so conservative with changing Soyuz today. Elon Musk is, in the eyes of Energia, a reckless cowboy calling for accidents to happen.

Suppose Shuttle would fly again. Can NASA learn enough from Columbia? Can it change Shuttle so that it won't suffer from falling ice? Reliably? Will it cause substantial redesign? May be, but Shuttle is unlikely to fly again. Now, Soyuz is still flying. Will it fly 20 more years? Will it get an unusual enough situation to critically fail - despite all precations and all history of redesigns? May be. We'll see.

Re:No, that means it is still being used

[Anonymous Coward]

Gods, man, lay off the goddamn kool-aid, will you?

If you want to discuss irrelevancies, then why not bring up how much more the shuttle could do on a mission than Soyuz?

Well, right now the shuttles can do precisely zero, there are no missions at the various museums they're on display.

They have very close records.

Right. Now we're in fairyland. So far the Soyuz program had 2 crashes, one in its first manned mission (Soyuz 1) in '67 and the other Soyuz 11 in '71. That's about 43 years of no reliability problems, and we're a few generations later - so the reliability of Soyuz 11 is irrelevant for modern missions. Now compare that with the shuttle, which only started test flights in '81 and operational ones in '82. Yeah, it was _designed_ to do more, but that brought about those reliability problems. Of course the shuttle was quite more sophisticated and having it work as well as it did was no mean feat, just ask the Russians how Buran went for them. But in no way the overall reliability is in the same class as the Soyuz. Do few things but do them well works in engineering, be it aeronautics or Unix design.

But let's just consider the ratio of failed to successful missions, that seems more reasonable. By that metric, they are pretty close.

Right. Shall I take your word for it? hmm, let's check it out. Throw in some total mission time since we're at it.

• * Space Shuttle: 135 missions (1981-2011), about 1322 days of mission duration, accidents in 1986 and 2003, total casualties 14
• * Soyuz, all versions: 122 missions (ongoing since 1967), heck, too lazy to sum up all the days in space but if you only count the flights in the last 4 years you get more than double the Shuttle mission time (Soyuz flights tend to spend about 5 months or more flying, this has been the case with few exceptions for more than 20 years); 2 accidents, '67 and '71, total casualties 4.

So, a couple of accidents in the first 4 years (and 10 manned missions) is totally the same as the shuttle who, after the 2003 accident, still had foam-related scares in 2007, 4 years later. In short, you have no idea what you're talking about. Feel free to do armchair comparisons to your heart's content though, and do ignore the fact that nobody is building shuttle-type vehicles anymore for ... some strange and incomprehensible reasons.

Re:No, that means it is still being used

[dryeo]

The sister ship of the Titanic, the RMS Olympic, steamed for 24 years before being replaced by the RMS Queen Mary and scrapped and was the largest ocean liner in the world from 1911-1913 (excepting the short reign of the Titanic). The other sister, the HMHS Britannic had the misfortune of meeting a mine. She was larger then the Titanic and benefited from the lessons learned from the sinking of the Titanic (the Olympic also benefited with retrofits) and even though she sank within an hour there was only 30 casualties which I believe includes the occupants of 2 life boats that got munched by the propellers. Would have been much better if all the portholes were closed and a water-tight door hadn't failed, may have been worse if the water had been freezing instead of room temperature.
The Titanic was never claimed to be unsinkable, just very safe, the press started the unsinkable BS.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...

Same shit as the Chinese Longsoon processor

[Sycraft-fu]

This isn't something serious, just nationalism and/or cronyism. A real domestic processor project? It wouldn't be "dozens of millions of dollars" it would be tens of billions. Intel spent $10 billion on R&D... in 2013 alone. TSMC, who's just a fab not a designer, spent $1.4 billion in 2013.

Semiconductor manufacture is EXPENSIVE. A single modern fab easily tops a billion dollars to build, more like $3 billion. That's just to build it, running it and upgrading it can easily cost that much again over a few years. That is projected to grow to about $15 billion for a high end fab in 2020. All that, and you only have the ability to make chips, you don't actually have any chips to make.

Designing chips is again expensive. You need a bunch of smart, skilled, and experienced engineers and they need to put in a ton of work. It takes years. Companies that do fast design revisions have multiple teams that trade off working on chips, one team will be working on the next gen chip, another team on the gen after that, so that there is enough time to get the designs done.

So if Russia really wanted their own chips, like their own design, their own production, and all that, and wanted said chips to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc, well they'd have to spend a ton of money, and a good amount of time.

This is, as you say, posturing. License an existing core design (made by Western nations), build an older technology fab, and produce some low end chips that aren't really that useful.

Re:Same shit as the Chinese Longsoon processor

[careysub]

...

So if Russia really wanted their own chips, like their own design, their own production, and all that, and wanted said chips to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc, well they'd have to spend a ton of money, and a good amount of time.

...

All is as you say. But your conditional statement reveals why your argument is irrelevant.

Why do the Russian chips need "to be on the same level as modern chips from Intel, IBM, etc,"? They aren't trying to compete against those companies. They aren't selling them on the open market. They are simply using them of desktop computers and servers in the government, by government purchasing decision.

Commercial processors reached the level that they can fulfill all the real functional needs of the vast majority of desktop applications years ago. A decade old chip running decade old office software can do everything nearly everyone working in an office needs to do as well as the latest and "greatest". Microsoft, Intel, and the PC makers now work in quasi-collusion to force "upgrades" on businesses that do not need them or want them to keep the revenue flowing, but with diminishing success at doing so. Witness the fact that 28% of PCs still run Windows XP despite facing the artificial pressure of support termination by Microsoft, and not being able to buy any XP computers for years.

The advantages of using the newest chips have little or nothing to do with supporting the core office functions for which they are purchased - it is to run "eye candy", power saving (not an issue Russia cares about), or applications that actually harm typical office productivity.

The issue is a bit more complicated for servers - but most server applications only require a tiny fraction of modern chip capabilities, which is why high degrees of virtualization are now common. The Russians will have to use more server chips, but each app will still run fine.

Re:Good luck with that

[Froggels]

their entire economy revolves around selling things they can find on the ground.

We are so much better because our economy revolves around moving money between accounts.

Re:I wonder what their reasoning is...?

[drinkypoo]

" As of 2010, the country [the united states] remains the world's largest manufacturer, representing a fifth of the global manufacturing output."
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E...

[citation needed] because sadly, your citation does not itself provide a proper citation. It simply links to an entire department of the UN, that is not acceptable. Can you provide a proper citation that explains what "global manufacturing output" means? Does that include things assembled in the USA from foreign parts, like International-Navistar engines with blocks cast in China? The block is the most important part of the engine, to me that motor is at least half-Chinese.

Why do people keep saying this?

Probably because they have seen no credible evidence to the contrary.

American arrogance

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the difficulties of actually producing sufficient quantities of working state of the art processors to replace all those chips from Russian chip foundries.

We Americans do not have a monopoly on smart people or technical know-how. As a matter of fact, for the last 15+ years we have been offshoring much of our high tech manufacturing - it's not just the low tech shit. Intel has been offshoring much of their stuff and I like the idea of karma coming to bite them in the ass.

Russia has LOTS of hard currency and they can buy the best of the best from any company on the planet. So, if they do have a problem, they can just buy someone from Intel, AMD or someone else - or just hire someone that one of those companies canned - I mean "downsized" - what a way to get back at the short sighted-treat people like commodity-corporate assholes.

In other words, I have no doubt that the Russians will be successful - and more power to them. I am looking forward to some advances in microchip technology.

Re:Lets Get Real

[Anonymous Coward]

Small budget?

Well... it all depends on their priorities... Either it's "Make the best X we can with Y amount of money" or "Make the cheapest X we can for Y amount of money that we then can sell for Z amount of money so we can finance project Q"

The first option there is probably the best.. And the second part here is that they can probably ignore all the existing patents that covers all this and there by reducing per-unit cost with quite a bit.

Re:The OpenSSL Disasters were a result of attitude

[jbolden]

The person who wrote the bug has described at length where the bug came from. The source code, and email history at the time obviously supports the very non paranoid origin that it came from a performance tweak to avoid allocating and deallocating memory. There was no NSA involvement.

Okayyyy!

[Chas]

But then they won't be able to pirate Windows for these systems.

Oops! Was I not supposed to point out the elephant in the room?

Re:Good luck with that

[K. S. Kyosuke]

You're raising an interesting point: the Russians have historically cloned PDPs and IBM mainframes (mostly for SW reasons, I guess), and they succeeded - sort of, given that their component base was rather limited. But the ARM people you mention did the design they did precisely because their resources (financial, manufacturing, design iterations etc.) were very limited. They gambled everything on simplicity, and it paid off. That wasn't the case with those Russian-built IBMs and PDPs, though. I wonder what would have happened if the Russians hadn't blindly cloned US hardware and gone instead for architectures matched for simplicity, like Novix NC4016 or similar things. It was way faster than anything from Intel at that time, and way more simple, so simple that even Tesla Piestany could have manufactured it (sorry, Slovaks ;-)).

Re:I wonder what their reasoning is...?

[drinkypoo]

You should call that humorous "economics"...

That's okay, because economists disagree on cause and effect at the highest levels, as well as the lowest ones. Given that, a high school economics student (honors or not, let's just take "passing" as a given for the scope of this conversation) probably has at least as good a chance to get economics right as anyone else, and probably a lot better than most.