Russia wants to replace US computer chips with local processors

[MilSpec]

I think the initiative is very noble, I hope they achive some degree of success. Russia does have massive background in opto-electronics from it's defence industry.

 

[senheiser]

AMD lost to Intel it would be a surprise if they can beat AMD atleast. Coming close to ARM Holdings product based upon it would require billions of rubbles before competing with AMD.

of course they can, for servers defiantly it just needs some self made linux OS to run on what ever hardware you want.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

so what, russian taxpayers pay money to buy american chips. Its redicolous, it obviously should be russian made chips and you can see that in total over a third of all chips sold in russia come from the government.

It will create jobs in russia

Just to build a modern semiconductor fab, will cost several B$.
Very few companies worldwide have the know-how needed for a modern semiconductor process (20 nm)

If this is the plan, it will take a long time, and be very expensive, if Russia will succeed at all.
This was tried by the Soviet Union, which could produce prototypes in a much simpler process,
but not commercially viable chips.
The only realistic plan is to work with one of the big semiconductor fabs.

Then you are going to end up with a mediocre performance machine, which does not run Windows.
Linux should be OK.

5 Million devices @ 3,5 B$ = 700$/chip so price/performance is going to be TERRIBLE.
Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 @ 3.3GHz = ~200$.
This is going to run in circles around any ARM chip.

 

[senheiser]

The amount of R&D money it takes to stay at the cutting edge of process technology is a huge barrier, let alone the actual technical ability.

There are 100 reasons that something like this won't be happening any time soon.

Just to build a modern semiconductor fab, will cost several B$.
Very few companies worldwide have the know-how needed for a modern semiconductor process (20 nm)

If this is the plan, it will take a long time, and be very expensive, if Russia will succeed at all.
This was tried by the Soviet Union, which could produce prototypes in a much simpler process,
but not commercially viable chips.
The only realistic plan is to work with one of the big semiconductor fabs.

Then you are going to end up with a mediocre performance machine, which does not run Windows.
Linux should be OK.

5 Million devices @ 3,5 B$ = 700$/chip so price/performance is going to be TERRIBLE.
Intel Xeon E3-1230v3 @ 3.3GHz = ~200$.
This is going to run in circles around any ARM chip.

russian tax money for russian products it doesnt matter what people think of it. Who cares about performance if americans are controlling our servers. Once its established it will spread to the consumer just like the internet was originally a CIA project.

seriously where comes this european mentality to except american monopolies, not questioning the non plus ultra? Its very weak thats why europe is weak in general.

 

[Developereo]

Microcontroller industry has hit a huge technology barrier (due to limitations in material and fab) which even the best in the industry like Intel, AMD are finding difficult to climb. This provides huge opportunity for the new players including Russia. These are the times when new ideas are put to test and path-breaking innovations follow.

The traditional market leaves no space for new players.

That is very true.

Denning Scaling and, consequently, Moores' Law which drove exponential speedups in hardware for decades are approaching a critical barrier against quantum effects. The bumps in the road became quite evident in the mid 2000s and the end of the conventional road is already in sight, albeit a few decades away. That is why companies have been focusing on multi-core machines, rather than straight up speed increases. But these attempts at parallelism are running into their own issues with heat dissipation and power consumption.

However, parallelism is a very difficult terrain to conquer, not least because of mostly immature software technology.

The good news for Russia and China is that the field of parallel computing, which will become dominant, is highly mathematically intensive and those countries have an excellent foundation. The bad news is that the Americans are equally smart -- and they have the technological pedigree to stay one step ahead...

 

[OCguy]

russian tax money for russian products it doesnt matter what people think of it. Who cares about performance if americans are controlling our servers. Once its established it will spread to the consumer just like the internet was originally a CIA project.

seriously where comes this european mentality to except american monopolies, not questioning the non plus ultra? Its very weak thats why europe is weak in general.

If xenophobia and nationalism were all it takes to manufacture bleeding edge technology, the world would be quite a different place.

 

[senheiser]

If xenophobia and nationalism were all it takes to manufacture bleeding edge technology, the world would be quite a different place.

comes from most nationalistic country

Made in America Store

Made in the USA | Be American. Buy American.

Made in USA, Made in America, US, American-Made

Made in the USA Stores and sites

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

russian tax money for russian products it doesnt matter what people think of it. Who cares about performance if americans are controlling our servers. Once its established it will spread to the consumer just like the internet was originally a CIA project.

seriously where comes this european mentality to except american monopolies, not questioning the non plus ultra? Its very weak thats why europe is weak in general.

The Internet was a DARPA project, not CIA.
You say "once", and most others would say "if".
Russia may, if it spend 3,5B$ get out a chip, fabbed by Samsung or similar,
but will have a problem getting people to buy it on a free market.
Currently the market is almost zero for ARM based PC style computers.

Pads, mobile phones etc is different, but then you need state of the art
mobile telephony as well which is another couple of B$.

 

[OCguy]

comes from most nationalistic country

Made in America Store

Made in the USA | Be American. Buy American.

Made in USA, Made in America, US, American-Made

Made in the USA Stores and sites

"Buy American" is different than "We are going to force you to buy inferior American because we can't win contracts in an open market, and the market leading supplier is secretly trying to harm us"

 

[vostok]

"Buy American" is different than "We are going to force you to buy inferior American because we can't win contracts in an open market, and the market leading supplier is secretly trying to harm us"

U.S. for decades did not allow steel products from Russia, because it was better and cheaper. A couple of years ago the ban lifted, but now going to re-introduce.
Protectionism - absolutely normal thing for a country that cares about its future.

 

[Juice]

great idea....if I was in charge I would do the same. But you let us define the game....it will come to nothing.

 

[Firemaster]

Ok its good to go indigenous but how much it would take them reach half the IPC of top x64 single core. ARM is too weak in front of x64 chips.

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

The good news for Russia and China is that the field of parallel computing, which will become dominant, is highly mathematically intensive and those countries have an excellent foundation. The bad news is that the Americans are equally smart -- and they have the technological pedigree to stay one step ahead...

This is very true.

However, as with all other fields, we do not necessarily need to match America. All we need to do is "approach" their general capability, and that will give us more than enough room to compete at a decent level.

We are right now building supercomputers that use only Chinese microchips, and they are breaking into the highest supercomputer rankings. Not as fast as the world's number 1 supercomputer, which is also Chinese, but made with US-designed chips.

For an aspiring great power like China, and former superpowers like Russia, we really should make these high-level technologies domestically. Not just for economic reasons, but for geopolitical reasons too, since only a few countries are capable of making some of these high-level tech, making other countries vulnerable in the event of disputes.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

of course they can, for servers defiantly it just needs some self made linux OS to run on what ever hardware you want.

If you want to get out of American/Western domination you are going to have to be more aggressive in your approach and not even base it on linux (well maybe you were using it as an example)

Linux was basically written by one man...if you can't even pull that off why are you even wasting your time on microchips?

 

[Chinese-Dragon]

If you want to get out of American/Western domination you are going to have to be more aggressive in your approach and not even base it on linux.

Linux is open source, you can read the code before you compile it, so no chance of back doors.