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Russian Company Unveils Homegrown PC Chips
Reader WheatGrass shares the news from Russia Insider that MCST, Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies, has begun taking orders for Russian-made computer chips, though at least one expert quoted warns that the technology lags five years behind that of western companies; that sounds about right, in that the chips are described as "comparable with Intel Corp’s Core i3 and Intel Core i5 processors." Also from the article: Besides the chips, MCST unveiled a new PC, the Elbrus ARM-401 which is powered by the Elbrus-4C chip and runs its own Linux-based Elbrus operating system. MCST said that other operating systems, including Microsoft’s Windows and other Linux distributions, can be installed on the Elbrus ARM-401. Finally, the company has built its own data center server rack, the Elbrus-4.4, which is powered by four Elbrus-4C microprocessors and supports up to 384GB of RAM.
About time. We can't trust the Asian chips anymore.
At least the Ruskies have good security.
yeah, only, who would buy that stuff...
How are they going to be able to compete if they're five years behind? How will they ever catch up?
I'm confused. What is the architecture of the Elbrus-4C chip? Is it Sparc, Arm, or Intel x86?
I know Russians who are busily working on all sorts of interesting technologies in-house (SCADA, DCS, etc) There seems to be a real fear that if sanctions increase they'll be cut off from technology they need to run their industrial systems. It seems to have sparked a renaissance in the local software community, hell-bent of forging a form of self-reliance. Interesting to see where all this leads.
... computer programs you!
about time to become independent and make surveillance harder
is still miles ahead of AMD. Not trolling, AMD really needs to do something, honest :(
CPUs rootkit YOU!
There's little we couldn't do 5 years ago because of lack CPU power that we can magically do today. Scientific computing included.
....chips overclock *you*!
65nm isn't "competitive". It's 10 years old. It might compete with the original Athlon 64. Certainly not with anything modern.
Yawn... On duty on Sunday?
...they couldn't replicate an Apple ][ with 64KB of RAM and a 6502 CPU.
So this is quite an advance. Russia has always had trouble bringing forth advanced industrial products like CPUs.
Announcing the product is one thing. Delivering them in quantity is quite another.
I have to wonder if Putin's trade and oil deals with China included some exchange of expertise in digital manufacturing. Also, are the staff of this MCST company Russians or are they recent immigrants from China?
The recent EU/NATO baiting of the Bear has driven Putin into China's arms.
A Russian prisoner can cut a microchip with nothing more than chisel and hammer. They do build jet engines with manual lathes, terrahertz diodes with hand-cut crystals, and nuclear reactors with sand casting
If they can compete, good
If they can't, oh well.
https://meduza.io/en/lion/2015...
According to this site, it costs $4,000.
The Russians beat us into space, both manned and unmanned, surely the proven spinoffs and benefits of a space program automatically means they should be five years *ahead*?
"Windows 10 PCs are going to be locked down even tighter than ever before .. you’ll only be able to boot Microsoft-approved operating systems on these locked-down PCs." ref
Thankfully I don't buy or use prebuilt PC's. And I will not use a motherboard that doesn't allow turning off secure boot.
...that the chip's hard-wired back door leads to an agency using Cyrillic letters for its initials rather than English ones.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
About time. We can't trust the Asian chips anymore
AFAIK potato chips from America taste better
We've started developing our own processors too, but since they're made of wood they tend to ignite past 400MHz.
Get free satoshi (Bitcoin) and Dogecoins
The US isn't richer because of it's adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq and Russian won't be richer because of it's adventures in Ukraine, Georgia,etc. It's more likely to be bankrupt or in ruins. Of course by that time there will be no independent journalists to ask questions and everything will be glorious much in the way that it is becoming in Venezuela.
I was getting tired of the NSA back dooring my family, now I can have a choice of if they get digitally molested by the FSB or the NSA?
....chips overclock *you*!
Was going to say something like, "In Post-Soviet Russia, computer upgrades to new YOU!"
or ...computer boots YOU! ...software installs YOU! ...USErs must be COMPUTER friendly!
or
or
But you beat me to it. :(
Wow, I wish we had computer chip fabrication capability in OUR country. When will the US catch up to Russian computer manufacturing technology?
In Putin's Russia... ?
--- Mercutio was right.
I'm *really* curious to know what would happen if China or some other country where we get most of our semiconductors from, for some unknown reason, cuts off production and exports to USA and we were left to fend for ourselves in terms of manufacturing computer hardware and other technology items...
Could US companies feel compelled enough to restart manufacturing back here on US soil and swallow lost profit margins?
It is a feature, not a problem at all!
Does that mean you'll stop using facebook as well then?
No, because I never started in the first place, thank God. Facebook wasn't even around when I graduated from college.
It would be much easier to invalidate foreign copyrights
In order to do that, you would have to revoke the Berne Convention, and once you do that, you're kicked out of the World Trade Organization. A country that leaves the WTO would have a hard time exporting anything as WTO members enact punitive import duties against that country.
Ever heard about Intel, and its fabs in AZ, OR, NM? IIRC, even Micron has some memory fabs in ID. Not all chips are made in Taiwan, Korea and China
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... ....the internet. use it.
Hopefully they won't have the backdoors that Intel have.
Russia: thanks for stepping up. Competion is good.
All the engineers I know are unemployed.
Windows 10 makes the user-configuration toggle optional. On a PC, Microsoft allows manufacturers to choose whether or not a user can disable Secure Boot.
So just choose a manufacturer and model that lets you disable secure boot.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
still a fables semi relying on TSMC.
Choice is better than no choice.
Keep the Intel in a f/cage that's opaque to 3g and the russian chip in one opaque to UHF
What do you think of Intel AMT/vPro/VT and it's chipset level onboard vnc server?
If you recall IBM benchmarks for their mainframe processors, something they try hard never to reveal:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3078075&cid=41152115
And yes, that $80,000 IBM chip is only 26 mips and the one nearly a million $ is only 780 MIPs, these mainframe processors are a real joke when it comes to performance.
Elbrus machines are sold in very controlled manner - only to companies, not individuals.
Security through obscurity.
For booting of emulation level they have "hidden" ATA channel.
I wonder if it is really hidden from OS, because Elbrus does not have hypervisor at all.
What about RAM? Hard disks? Network chips?
So many names in summary/article. Is it SPARC architecture? ARM architecture? Or a different one?
If I lived in the US I'd take FSB anyday. And if in Russia NSA would be my choice of backdoor. Getting spied on by foreign goverments sounds reasonable, getting spied on by your own goverment sounds "a bit" orwelian.
you just spread propaganda - and lie,lie,lie
There is actually more fascism and nazizm in Russia than in Ukraina.
Just call it what is (nacionalism, socialism, strong fuehrer Putin).
Ukraina was repressed nad robbed by Russia-installed puppet Yanukovych - people were seeing how Poland improved since it got away from Moscow's leash and wanted the same from Ukraina.
Intel was significantly ahead of everyone else. Then AMD provided better performance per dollar even at a larger process size by choosing a better design. Then Intel beat them again. Next, ARM was suddenly outselling both when performance- per-watt became the key yardstick. Things change in the CPU market.
Ten years from now, 64-core processors may be competing against 128-core processors and there's no guarantee that either Intel or ARM would have the best design. Mybe in ten years it'll be all about not RISC vs CISC but EIS, Expanded Instruction Set.
Consider also the transition to 64-bit. Intel developed the Itanium. AMD choose to extend i386 with amd64. Intel ended up losing big time - they had to give up on Itanium and start naking AMD-compatible chips. There's no reason to think they won't make a similar mistake again.
Intel was significantly ahead of everyone else.
Was? They still are!
No. They are catching up, but they are behind in almost all aspects of CPU design. The only thing that saves them is that they have better manufacturing processes and that many people are willing to pay insane prices for Intel.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Same here. And it will be interesting to see whether this gets MS another threat of a few billion in penalties from the EU anti-trust people. The last time it did not because the tablets were regarded as dedicated devices. A PC is not.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
No, they are again. During the Pentium 4 era, they were behind on pretty much every metric. They only survived because of name recognition and AMD not having the production capacity to take more than about 20% of the market share. At the mid to low end, an Athlon system with the same performance was cheaper than anything Intel sold. At the high end, Opterons were roundly trouncing Xeons in absolute performance and performance per dollar.
The Pentium M was when it started to turn around for Intel - the laptop market started to grow rapidly and AMD was only just competitive on performance per Watt, but didn't have the laptop motherboard makers onboard. With the Core 2, Intel retook the performance crown.
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intel for years has done two things very very well: Process, and fabs. What they haven't done at all well is come up with a viable architecture by themselves. It's always been lots of external influence, down to the 4004 (that group kept poaching people from the 8008 group working in parallel because the 8008 was an external commission), the complete boo-boo that was the 8086, and even itanic and AMD stealing the AMD64 show.
This leaves quite a bit of room for better chips. There are various indications that ISA matters after all -- just look at the performance increase the AMD64-enlarged register file gets you, and dem Russkies are well-known for doing amazing things with very limited hardware. I'd love to see a thorough comparison, and that not just native intel vs emulated intel, but also native intel vs native Elbrus. I wouldn't be surprised if the five years turns out to be ballpark.
So just choose a manufacturer and model that lets you disable secure boot.
Those who receive a PC as a gift do not have this choice.
Thankfully I don't buy or use prebuilt PC's.
Do you build your own laptops? If not, how do you manage to abstain from using laptops entirely?
This is just like the old days where everyone (except the rich) in Russia got inferior quality (and quantity) stuff to avoid the evil western companies run by their evil capitalist masters. Now mind you, the moment the government stopped enforcing that restriction, it was as though floodgates had opened, but I'm sure this new era of restrictions will enjoy some popularity for a little while. Once that's over, few will have the guts to complain openly.
-- "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
American components, Russian Components, ALL MADE IN TAIWAN!
It is better to be the hammer than the anvil.
About time. We can't trust the Asian chips anymore.
At least the Ruskies have good security.
What would make chips from this Asian country (Russia) inherently better than chips from another Asian country? And yes, given that nearly 1/3 of Asia is Russian territory it should be safe to call Russia an Asian country.
Geographically, it might be in Asia, but culturally, the majority of people aren't. And even if that weren't the case, what the hell does it mean Asian? Central Asian? Far East Asian? Siberian? Those three grossly oversimplified labels apply to Russia (and many other former USSR states for that matter.) Grossly oversimplified as they are, these stand for significantly different things.
And we are only discussing the Asian'ness of Russia, without even entering into the whole continent? Asian as in the Near East/Asia Minor? Central Asia as in Iran or Kazakhstan or Mongolia (the later, culturally, is a Central Asian nation)? Far East as in China, the Korean Peninsula or Japan? Japan in many ways is a unique Western Country, or a country whose Asian'ness is no longer in tandem with what 'Far East Asia' embodies. And we are not even touching South East Asia and South Asia at all.
Russia escapes such ridiculous descriptions. For all practical purposes, culturally, politically and economically, it is a European country. It is not a Western country, but neither is most of Eastern Europe.
And the term "Asian" means so many things that by itself, it almost means nothing.
The whole point is that the Russkies don't want the UK-USA-Israel Secret Sweets built into products from said countries.
Comprendre ?
This chip is interesting... it runs VLIW, SPARC instructions, as well as translates X86-AMD64 as well.
Four 800 MHz cores are OK, but not exactly barnburners.
What interests me is the fact that the chip can run different sets of instructions. What this means is that I can slap a hypervisor on it and have it run either Solaris SPARC stuff or x86 VMs.
Two words:
Gift receipt.
ditto.
Okay, Elbrus has been a Russian artifact for pretty much all of its 40-something years of existence.
They've always been "Last decade's technology! TOMORROW! (We hope!)"
Like every other aspect of Russian engineering, they talk a good game and throw out a slick demo unit now and again.
But being competitive in a production environment? Pfft!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
So just choose a manufacturer and model that lets you disable secure boot.
Those who receive a PC as a gift do not have this choice.
And? Most people won't care, or even notice. Those who care tend to buy their own computers.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Except cooking eggs.
I've got one of those Alienware M7700 clones. There's more copper in it than a plumber's van and enough fans to make a normal laptop hover. And boy, it needs them.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
I had a housemate who had a P4 laptop. That machine was an absolute triumph of optimism over engineering. Fortunately, the thermal throttling in the P4 worked pretty well, so it didn't get too warm, it just got really, really slow...
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