News - Russia building 'Baikal processor' to replace AMD and Intel chips

[HEXUS]

Considers it unsafe to rely on US microchips for government and state business.

Read more.

[shaithis]

The start of Coldwar 2.0?

At least Britain is doing well out of this, more ARM licenses!

[LSG501]

you just got to love Russia... doesn't like the possibility of AMD/Intel chips being used to spy on them yet then goes and picks ARM which is 'designed' in Britain, who are probably one of the closest countries to the US when it comes to military action lol

[kompukare]

Surely if they are that worried about backdoors they should get an architectural licence from ARM or go with MIPS. Taken an off the shelf design and fabbing it themselves is not as secure as making their own design able to implement the ARM or MIPS instruction set.

Anyway, I'd suspect the intent is swap NSA spying for the Russian equivalent...

[Biscuit]

This is more of a statement than anything else. If it was 100% about safety, it wouldn't be in the press.

[wwwendigo]

you just got to love Russia... doesn't like the possibility of AMD/Intel chips being used to spy on them yet then goes and picks ARM which is 'designed' in Britain, who are probably one of the closest countries to the US when it comes to military action lol

Well, the enormous difference is in the details:

With AMD/intel you have a very black box with the cpus.

With ARM license, you can have a 100% transparent specifications and design that you can validate for security.

All the europeans (and other) nations should do this for security reasons, as well as abandoning Windows platform (it's enough about backdoors and integrated spyware from America/Commonwealth nations).

The russians are the logical ones, the UE are the morons in these topics.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The Russians already have an indigenous CPU with its own instruction set:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus_2000
http://rupaper.com/post/25135
http://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1697.0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elbrus-2C%2B
http://elbrus2.webs.com/




Some of the original design team were actually hired by Intel:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Babaian

The history of the Elbrus CPU:

http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm...ance-computer/

[satrow]

Putin wants to build in a centralised bitcoin mining system.

[crossy]

Electronics Weekly says Russian President Putin decided to push forward this processor development initiative. It follows a move, four years ago, when the Russian government said that all its computers would be moving to Linux.

As far as I can tell this is just yet more anti-western posturing from that poseur in the Kremlin. Much as I like Linux, where the heck is this Russian Public Sector Linux distro that was "announced" in 2010? Heck, even North Korea has their own one.

And, while I'm no expert, I'm willing to bet a lot that developing a processor is a lot more labour intensive than a Linux-based OS. Even if that processor is based on an existing licensed/copied/stolen architecture. Although I've got to wonder if the ARM basis would also perhaps allow the development of a Russian smartphone with a high level of local content.

As regards this processor, like "PutinOS", I'll believe when (or should that be "if") I see it.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Elbrus was not stolen but quite a unqiue design,which was based on VLIW instruction set,and designed to be a "wide" design which does more per clock cycle to compensate for the lower clockspeeds - derivivatives have been around for decades and even Intel poached some of the people who were involved with it.

Look at the Monoblock PC - its even stated that it was going to be deployed to Russian government and military installations,so the process of going back to more indigenous designs has been going on for a while.

China has been doing for years for their own indigenous MIPS-like CPUs.

Russia has been buying up older fab technology for a few years now:

http://www.xbitlabs.com/news/other/d..._from_AMD.html
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-relea...176626901.html

They are starting to update their indigenous fabs.

FFS,the Russian military is even developing its own tablets using a vetted version of Android:

http://www.theverge.com/2012/9/2/328...ndroid-tablets

Its called RoMOS.

China is doing the same,and what people don't seem to understand is that the US uses tech as a weapon too,ie,the moment you piss them off/or they see you as a competitor they can literally stop countries from using or at least buying stuff with any degree of their tech in it.

An example is when Pratt and Whitney collaborated with Aviadvigatel on a newer version of the Aviadvigatel PS-90 Turbofan. Even though the engine was made in Russia,the US stepped and stopped the Russians from selling any transport aircraft or airliners to countries they did not like.

What this has meant is that,BOTH Russia and China are now fast tracking indigenous chip development so they can be self sufficient for their own needs and to circumvent export restrictions.

They are also creating jobs too,and trying to actually keep their own home grown talent. Russia always had made a lot of its own chips,but after the collapse of the USSR,the industry suffered massively due to foreign competition,and foreign companies hired some of their best people in the field.

The "Baikal" chip is most likely to be not only used for PCs,derivatives could find themselves in aircraft and spacecraft for example,and frees them from export restrictions or external interference. Remember once the problems started,the US instantly slapped restrictions on the Russian space programme,and this is mostly around things on the computing side,ie,US made computing components(or ones with US tech) used in satellites,etc.

As usual this is all forgotten.

[canopus72]

It's good to see intel and AMD finally getting some competition. Russian scientists are very good at mathematics and physics, so I think any Russian cpu will give the yanks a run for their money. However, I personally would not buy a Russian cpu as I do not want to either directly or indirectly fund Russian state terrorism and genocide (this issue may well adversely affect their chances of seeking international revenue. Although on the flip side of the coin, it has not adversely affected intel).

What I really want to see is the Japs and/or Koreans start their own brand of 64bit/X86 cpu. I would buy it in a heart beat, as it would undoubtedly wipe the floor with intel and AMD.

[kingpotnoodle]

What I really want to see is the Japs and/or Koreans start their own brand of 64bit/X86 cpu. I would buy it in a heart beat, as it would undoubtedly wipe the floor with intel and AMD.

Yeah it would be easy to replicate decades of R&D over night and shoot to the top of the market, after all it worked out *so* well for IDT/VIA and Transmeta.

Even ARM building on the decades old architecture they have cannot touch Intel/AMD for outright single thread performance, the fastest ARM chips in the market are only Atom or low end Celeron level and are absolutely no good at all for many uses (i.e. video editing workstations etc). The domination of Intel & AMD in the x86 market is such that other companies had to try and find a niche (usually low power or low cost) and in the past these niches just haven't been big enough, it's only recently (too late for Transmeta) that the low power niche has gained momentum and surprise, surprise Intel and to an extent AMD have started to fill it more aggressively.

[AnyOldName3]

What I really want to see is the Japs and/or Koreans start their own brand of 64bit/X86 cpu. I would buy it in a heart beat, as it would undoubtedly wipe the floor with intel and AMD.

Yeah it would be easy to replicate decades of R&D over night and shoot to the top of the market, after all it worked out *so* well for IDT/VIA and Transmeta.

Even ARM building on the decades old architecture they have cannot touch Intel/AMD for outright single thread performance, the fastest ARM chips in the market are only Atom or low end Celeron level and are absolutely no good at all for many uses (i.e. video editing workstations etc). The domination of Intel & AMD in the x86 market is such that other companies had to try and find a niche (usually low power or low cost) and in the past these niches just haven't been big enough, it's only recently (too late for Transmeta) that the low power niche has gained momentum and surprise, surprise Intel and to an extent AMD have started to fill it more aggressively.

A lot of that is as much because there's no market for desktop ARM CPUs. If someone had enough money to make it worthwhile, they could reasonably easily scale up an ARM chip to 80W, and get some more performance out of it. However, ARM chips are almost exclusively wanted for low power devices, so that's the area the R&D's been going. There's nothing other than a lack of market pressure stopping this changing.

[Biscuit]

Stolen from Engadget:



bahahahahaha

[DanceswithUnix]

And, while I'm no expert, I'm willing to bet a lot that developing a processor is a lot more labour intensive than a Linux-based OS. Even if that processor is based on an existing licensed/copied/stolen architecture. Although I've got to wonder if the ARM basis would also perhaps allow the development of a Russian smartphone with a high level of local content.

They don't need to design it, they need a source license for a design so they can inspect it for back doors. That is tricky, but not that hard.

Yeah it would be easy to replicate decades of R&D over night and shoot to the top of the market, after all it worked out *so* well for IDT/VIA and Transmeta.

Even ARM building on the decades old architecture they have cannot touch Intel/AMD for outright single thread performance, the fastest ARM chips in the market are only Atom or low end Celeron level and are absolutely no good at all for many uses (i.e. video editing workstations etc). The domination of Intel & AMD in the x86 market is such that other companies had to try and find a niche (usually low power or low cost) and in the past these niches just haven't been big enough, it's only recently (too late for Transmeta) that the low power niche has gained momentum and surprise, surprise Intel and to an extent AMD have started to fill it more aggressively.

When the first ARM chip came out, it could wipe the floor with x86. OK, everything else was faster than x86 too, but ARM was really quick.

Intel was busy tacking on mainframe technology stolen from the 60's onto their register starved stupidly segmented design that they knocked up in a hurry because the i432 was such an utter unimaginable disaster. Intel being at all quick in absolute terms is still a recent thing. Historically they have only been fast for an x86 design, and for quite a while the DEC Alpha could emulate an x86 in software faster than the best Intel had to offer (Pentium II era from memory) as well as the times that they lost in performance to am486 and Athlon64.

I suspect a 20 core A57 ARM design would fly at video editing, and be so much cheaper than an i7. I would love for AMD to offer the FM2+ socket to the Russians for no royalties, and lets see what they can manage.

[kingpotnoodle]

A lot of that is as much because there's no market for desktop ARM CPUs. If someone had enough money to make it worthwhile, they could reasonably easily scale up an ARM chip to 80W, and get some more performance out of it. However, ARM chips are almost exclusively wanted for low power devices, so that's the area the R&D's been going. There's nothing other than a lack of market pressure stopping this changing.

I'm not sure it's as simple as just scaling up, remember Pentium IV - it got hotter and hungrier but the gains in clock speed and performance got more disappointing... it certainly wouldn't be one of the existing ARM designs at 80W and it wouldn't be trivial to design from scratch a CPU using the ARM instruction set that performed like a high Intel/AMD chip. There are a lot of CPU architectures out there, most are either low power or in expensive niche servers etc... it's a tricky business to do well in.