Russian Electronics: Semiconductor and Processors

I wonder is that even possible now, considering sanctions and the fact that most of the equipment was supposed to be imported?
State of Russian electronic industry is as expected, considering that head of Rusnano, until recently, was notorious Chubais, one of the champions of failed 90's policies. How did this man deserved anything else than prison term and what kind of backdoor deals brought him to position of Rusnano head is another story.

the one that the Electrobrain guy was talking about is the 28nm x-ray experimental plant at the University - in the new 50,000 sq m plant

and there is also this huge 500,000 sq m ? .... Angstrom 2.0 plant that Lancelot showed aerial shots of
to make conventional sized CPUs ....  (mostly for the car industry I believe)  90nm - 110nm

and there are actually 2x funded govt projects
saying exactly that ..... and 90-110nm factory project was getting if I remember correctly about 10x more funding than the 28nm project
(which is about right as - design is 15% of the process of mass production .... 85% is development to get yourself setup to mass produce at an economical rate to make money .... )

"In 2022, it is planned to launch the production of microelectronics according to the topology of 90 nm. Apparently, this refers to the expansion of the range of products produced by this technology.
By 2030, it is planned to enter the serial production of electronics according to the topology of 28 nm and increase the number of Russian design centers from 70 to 300."

interesting days .... but there is no reason why Autovaz wouldn't use Rus electronics wherever it could
as would Kamaz and GAZ .... so that idea is still alive I think .... hardware is the issue

Gazputin wrote:the one that the Electrobrain guy was talking about is the 28nm x-ray experimental plant at the University - in the new 50,000 sq m plant

and there is also this huge 500,000 sq m ? .... Angstrom 2.0 plant that Lancelot showed aerial shots of
to make conventional sized CPUs ....  (mostly for the car industry I believe)  90nm - 110nm

and there are actually 2x funded govt projects
saying exactly that ..... and 90-110nm factory project was getting if I remember correctly about 10x more funding than the 28nm project
(which is about right as - design is 15% of the process of mass production .... 85% is development to get yourself setup to mass produce at an economical rate to make money .... )

"In 2022, it is planned to launch the production of microelectronics according to the topology of 90 nm. Apparently, this refers to the expansion of the range of products produced by this technology.
By 2030, it is planned to enter the serial production of electronics according to the topology of 28 nm and increase the number of Russian design centers from 70 to 300."

interesting days .... but there is no reason why Autovaz wouldn't use Rus electronics wherever it could
as would Kamaz and GAZ .... so that idea is still alive I think .... hardware is the issue

I believe equipment for 90-110 nm shouldn't be the problem. It would be possible to buy it from China or some other Asian country. It's not a cutting edge tech. Maybe a recent news about cooperation with Malaysia is giving some hints on that front.

it was a period when capital was in very short supply
so the easiest way to do anything was to move to a variable cost system
where you just buy in or lease equipment ...

best example is Aeroflot
it boasted for years it had the youngest fleet in the world .... and it was true
all leased ... and run on a variable cost structure
you own nothing - you rent the planes .... and you fly the wings off them to make more than the rental cost

90s were a problem
I remember Russia almost lost several GEO satellite orbit positions because the govt didn't have the funds to build the satellites
and that's how Gazprom ended up with a satellite business. ... which it still has to this day
Gazprom paid for the satellites to save the day

you also notice say in Roscosmos
the number of young guys in top jobs .... like that Alexandr Bloshenko character .... he is head of all future projects ..... he is quite young
and the guy in charge of the Luna-25 lander project you see shots of him .... with his earring also young
the telltale signs are there if you look closely enough ...
there is a whole "lost generation" of engineers ....

you see it in the aircraft industry  - re issues getting Il-76 aircraft back into mass production

(Russia isn't alone in this - look at the enormous issues the US is having with its SLS mega rocket for the Moon
it is based on the Space Shuttle .... but all those engineers are retired or dead or working somewhere else now .... and all that knowledge has gone
when you stop capital investment you lose all your good engineers ....
R&D can straggle on at Unis ..... but its results just sit there )

Gazputin wrote:it was a period when capital was in very short supply
so the easiest way to do anything was to move to a variable cost system
where you just buy in or lease equipment ...

best example is Aeroflot
it boasted for years it had the youngest fleet in the world .... and it was true
all leased ... and run on a variable cost structure
you own nothing - you rent the planes .... and you fly the wings off them to make more than the rental cost

90s were a problem
I remember Russia almost lost several GEO satellite orbit positions because the govt didn't have the funds to build the satellites
and that's how Gazprom ended up with a satellite business. ... which it still has to this day
Gazprom paid for the satellites to save the day

you also notice say in Roscosmos
the number of young guys in top jobs .... like that Alexandr Bloshenko character .... he is head of all future projects ..... he is quite young
and the guy in charge of the Luna-25 lander project you see shots of him .... with his earring also young
the telltale signs are there if you look closely enough ...
there is a whole "lost generation" of engineers ....

you see it in the aircraft industry  - re issues getting Il-76 aircraft back into mass production

(Russia isn't alone in this - look at the enormous issues the US is having with its SLS mega rocket for the Moon
it is based on the Space Shuttle .... but all those engineers are retired or dead or working somewhere else now .... and all that knowledge has gone
when you stop capital investment you lose all your good engineers ....
R&D can straggle on at Unis ..... but its results just sit there )

I agree fully with that notion. Russian establishment swallowed whole neoliberal bs hook, line and sinker. That's why characters like Chubais were able to survive and thrive for so long with atrocious record. Let's see how long will it take them to recover previous positions. Especially, against current backdrop.

https://sdelanounas.ru/blogs/146786/

Micron, a resident of the Moscow Technopolis special economic Zone, has released an experimental batch of the first fully domestic microcontroller based on the RISC-V open architecture, which will allow the production of devices and devices to reduce dependence on foreign component bases and licenses.

Microcontroller is a basic component of electronic equipment, used in consumer and industrial electronics: engineering infrastructure systems, sensor networks, telecommunications equipment, measuring devices.

The new microcontroller can be used for industrial automation and the Internet of Things, smart home, infrastructure and security systems, telemetry and monitoring, metering devices, fuel and energy complex, transport, medicine, trade, road infrastructure and devices, housing and communal services and other areas. It is a universal basic unit for import substitution in domestic electronics

The open architecture allows developers and manufacturers not to depend on patent holders when creating and developing new electronic devices and modules, which reduces the dependence of Russian electronics on foreign technologies and components.

"Micron Company has been a resident of the SEZ since 2015 "Technopolis Moscow is part of the microelectronics cluster and produces more than 4 billion chips annually. The resident's production facilities for the production of microcontrollers on the territory of the Moscow SEZ allow us to fully cover the current needs of Russian manufacturers. This can be considered a significant step for the domestic instrument industry, " said Gennady Degtev, General Director of the Moscow SEZ.

Fully Russian microcontroller with a core based on the open RISC-V architecture-32-bit MK32 AMUR developed by NIIMA Progress has built-in cryptographic protection and allows its full use in critical infrastructure and objects with high security requirements.

"The Russian component base of the first level is now available to developers of OpenSource solutions in general, and the RISC-V ecosystem in particular. The first sample plates have already been received and are undergoing the necessary tests. MK32 AMUR is the first fully domestic RISC-V microcontroller: the entire development and production cycle is carried out in Russia. Today, we already see a high level of market interest, with more than 200 requests received from manufacturers of various equipment: metering devices, telemetry, cash registers, medical equipment, road infrastructure, and robotics. And we have implemented the possibility of placing an order with a choice of the contract period and delivery terms, starting from October 2022, for everyone who is interested in localizing their devices and devices in the RISC-V ecosystem," said Gulnara Khasyanova, General Director of Micron JSC.

Could someone smarter than me make some comments about this article?

https://habr.com/ru/post/576420/?ysclid=l3aqhxrnq1

rigoletto wrote:Could someone smarter than me make some comments about this article?

https://habr.com/ru/post/576420/?ysclid=l3aqhxrnq1

Im not an expert in microelectronics but pls note:


1) he was writing about "Elbrus in general PC architecture"

2) https://habr.com/ru/users/Armmaster/

Author is just a blogger working for Huawei and arm-master so  his arm knowledge/are of interest. Elbrus works against his company in this field btw.


3) HABR stands from Harvard Business Review - i.e. foe media

Here you have pros for Elbrus:
https://kiozk.ru/article/ekspert/bitva-na-polah-mikroelektroniki-s-elbrusom-napereves

He is being a petulant retarded idiot. He is comparing apples with oranges and also makes all sorts of nonsensical comparisons which aren't even chalk with cheese.

I will give you an example. He dismisses SPEC CPU as a benchmark and claims 7-zip and Blender benchmarks are more important to gauge performance. Well guess what. SPEC CPU is what we call a composite benchmark. You run a whole suite with a bunch of benchmarks and then compute an aggregate composite number. A single number which roughly describes performance on average for a whole set of applications. SPEC CPU has a compression benchmark (gzip) and ray tracing benchmark (ray) in the suite. The compression benchmark is roughly what 7-zip does, and the ray tracing one is roughly what Blender does. He claims focusing on a single benchmark is better. Well it isn't. You always look at composite benchmarks to gauge general purpose usability. You go into application specific benchmarks if that application matters to you.

As for the merits of VLIW vs OoO architecture processors. These are well known. OoO is better than VLIW at branch heavy multi-threaded applications with thin compute per thread. And VLIW is better than OoO for technical compute where you need to perform a lot of arithmetic operations. The major benefit of VLIW is that you reduce the amount of transistors in the die used for control and branch prediction and the like and then you can use those to make more functional units instead. The problem with VLIW is that in applications where parallelism is hard to extract the performance craters more quickly. But that is only the case because a VLIW processor is typically wider than an OoO processor made with similar manufacture process and transistor budget. Once you get to wider OoO processors you start bumping into the same issues.

Elbrus was originally designed as a supercomputer processor. It was used on the Don2 radar for example. Elbrus2K comes from that and is well suited for both technical compute and workstation purposes. Also well suited for aircraft avionics like for radar signal processing or other data parallel tasks. Now, if you want to run multi-threaded Java apps, or SQL databases, it won't be as good as an OoO processor designed with the same resource base. Because of the reasons I mentioned. But this is when we talk about traditional VLIW processors. The fact is, I do not even know the specific minutia of how the latest Elbrus2K architecture works. In theory there is no reason why you can't put dynamic scheduling on VLIW just like you can on an OoO processor. One way to do it is to have a software dynamic scheduler. The Transmeta CPUs did this. Another way is to add specific hardware support for branch prediction, instruction reordering, speculation, and the like. Itanium CPUs tried to go this route.

Given the Russian resource base, where they have older manufacturing processes, the VLIW design makes sense. And the military and technical applications typically used by the design are suitable for it. It this was a processor designed for a bank or a web services company then they wouldn't have chosen that kind of design.

He also does other nonsensical comparisons. He keeps comparing the IPC of things which are not comparable. Like x86 and Elbrus2K processors made with different semiconductor budgets with different transistor budgets.

The difference in clockspeed is kind of irrelevant. Typically wider processors, like Elbrus2K, have lower clockspeeds but compensate for it with more peak instructions per cycle. What matters is how many instructions you can compute per second. Comparisons with AMD Epyc are nonsense. Made with different process and multiple chiplets. If you made an Elbrus processor with similar manufacture resources the Elbrus2K would be way wider than the AMD x86 one.

The only things he mentions which I can relate with is are lack of availability of the hardware for consumers to buy and lack of openly available compilers and tools. This was also a problem with Itanium. I can sort of understand it since this is the secret sauce of MCST. But it will cause problems for the success of the architecture itself in the long run.

I can also relate that he is comparing two things he supposedly can buy. But, the thing is, for the military they need to buy things made in Russia. And given the types of applications the military needs, Elbrus is the ideal processor and design for them. Baikal does not even design their own CPU cores. So I do not consider them to be on the same playing field as MCST. Not in a long shot.

Russia has a fabless semiconductor company which designs RISC-V cores for licensing to third parties. So you could say this is the embryo of a Russian ARM like competitor. In the long run this company should have good chances for embedded applications and who knows what else. The Mikron manufactured embedded chip mentioned a couple posts above uses one of their core designs.

https://syntacore.com/

I think companies like Baikal will have no future in the new conditions where Russia can't access foreign semiconductor fabs.

Intel failed with its VLIW effort, EPIC, because it lacked the market volume and because its compiler had issues. The OO and branch
prediction is supposed to be done by the compiler instead of silicon with VLIW so it is critical that the compiler is bug free and efficient.
But we all know what sh*t software is. It is basically all beta-ware. But the thing about Russia is that software projects can be
realized at world leading levels. The software infrastructure around the Elbrus proves this.

An example of something you will not find in the west that I have ever seen but which may exist in some lab: a binary retranslator.
So an x86 binary is decomposed into its assembly instructions (ones the hardware sees) and mapped onto the Elbrus VLIW architecture.
This is not emulation and is not a virtual machine either. Sure, there is a performance hit but it is still much faster than any emulator.
It is also making foreign architecture binaries native to the Elbrus without seeing the original source code.

The need for a retranslator is limited to software which the maker cannot be bothered to port. It is better to have software from
companies that are not beholden to some special set of architectures. I guess if people want to play video games, then they will
want x86 hardware. People who use hardware for work don't need to do this. Engineering and science code is custom to a large
extent, but there are commercial packages such as Matlab and Fluent. But they can be replaced if you are serious.

There was/is similar software in the US for binary translation. Digital Equipment Corporation used to have something called FX!32 which was used in Windows NT for Alpha processors. It translated x86 Windows applications to run on Alpha Windows. Apple had something similar, called Rosetta, which they bought to translate PowerPC applications to run on x86. I assume the latest Apple Macs, the ones with the M1 chip, use something similar to run x86 Mac applications on ARM Macs.

I am surprised about Apple. I thought they had the applications developers provide ports of commercial software. This is the most
effective approach. Back in the 1990s Microsoft had apple versions of its software.

Anyway, I obviously missed the Digital and similar efforts. Thanks for the schooling

MacOS X is derived from the NeXTSTEP operating system. So it has something called "fat binaries". You can compile a composite binary targetted at multiple CPU architectures. And when you click to run the binary on the operating system it selects the binary most appropriate for your computer. Later versions of Windows also have something similar.

On top of that you have Rosetta 2, which can either translate a x86 binary into an ARM one when the application is installed, or JIT compile a X86 binary so it can run on an ARM platform.
Of course MacOS X itself only does this for running MacOS X86 platforms on MacOS ARM platforms.

To run a Windows application on a Mac you used to need something called Parallels, which was a machine emulator, installed.
When the CPU was an x86 that was probably pretty trivial. You still needed a copy of Windows to install on the emulator. It was probably something kind of like VMWare. Now that Apple moved to ARM I don't know how you can run a Windows application on a Mac.

Video about Elbrus and the prospects of computing in Russia in the current situation.

https://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/30/05/2022/6290e5e39a794746a563548c

The developer of Elbrus processors agrees with Mikron to transfer their production to Zelenograd. The factory in Taiwan became unavailable due to sanctions, but the level of technology development in Russia is much lower

The MCST company, which is the developer of the Russian Elbrus processors, is negotiating the possibility of transferring their production to the Russian Micron factory. This was told to RBC by a source and confirmed by Konstantin Trushkin, Deputy General Director for Marketing of the MCST. A representative of Mikron Group declined to comment.

Until now, Elbrus processors were manufactured at Taiwan's TSMC, which has the capacity to produce processors with a process technology from 90 nanometers (nm) to 5 nm. At the end of last year, TSMC announced the start of experimental production on the 3-nanometer process technology and is working on the 2 nm topology. However, after the start of a special military operation in Ukraine, TSMC stopped cooperation with Russian companies due to US sanctions. Due to restrictions, companies need to obtain a special license to export high-tech products that use American technologies to Russia. It is assumed that the US authorities will issue such a license only in exceptional cases. At the same time, processor manufacturers Intel and AMD refused to supply their products to Russia.

Processor manufacturer Qualcomm has stopped selling its products in Russia

According to the information on the official website of the MCST, the Elbrus line of processors includes chips in the topology starting from 130 nm, and the company's most advanced processor is manufactured using the 16 nm process technology. Users of these processors are primarily law enforcement and government agencies in Russia. As Konstantin Trushkin explained, speaking at the annual meeting of the Association of Software Developers (ARPP) "Domestic Software" in late April (RBC correspondent attended the event), "Micron" makes it possible to produce processors using 90 nm technology, in addition, there are various "difficult moments" that prevent the domestic factory from reaching full-fledged production. mass production. At the same time, Trushkin said that the MCST is considering two options for action in the face of sanctions: transfer the assembly of processors to Micron or create a separate company Elbrus, which will not be related to the MCST.

Now Trushkin explains that the sanctions have closed access to foreign factories for the MCST, so the company is considering switching to Russian facilities: "We see that domestic factories can create decent processors with sovereign Russian technologies for critical information infrastructure (this includes communication networks and information systems of government agencies, energy, financial, telecommunications and a number of others companies. — RBC), information security, and other markets. To achieve sufficient practical performance, we see a large reserve in processing the source code and optimizing the software for the Elbrus architecture. Whether the company will continue to produce processors using 45 nm or more advanced technologies, the representative of the MCST did not specify.

That article is misguided in several ways. Elbrus already has a 90nm CPU design manufactured at Mikron. The Elbrus-2SM from 2014. At best they might make a new Elbrus design more optimized for the 90nm process specific to Mikron which takes into account current technology and requirements. MCST does have another processor design which was originally produced at TSMC, the MCST-R1000, which uses SPARC instead of Elbrus architecture. It might be a good idea to redesign that for manufacture at Mikron as well. It has like half the transistors than Elbrus and for a lot of applications it is good enough.

Mikron also manufactures simple RISC-V chips which would be useful for embedded applications.

The article's claim that Elbrus is the only chip design team in Russia is false. There are other chip design teams. For example the ones who did the ELVEES RISCore32 architecture or the NeuroMatrix DSP family. There are also fabless companies like Syntacore who design CPU cores.

Given the limited size of the chip market in Russia it makes no sense for Elbrus to have their own fab. The state just needs to give a swift kick in the pants to Mikron and Angstrem-T.

sepheronx wrote:

Chip usage and demand may grow but even then doesn't make sense for MCST to have their own but rent.

I figure they can look at 3d chip design as well.

I dont get that. If all of above mentioned Russian microprocessor designers could buy manufacturing services from Taiwan why they cannot share one fab in Russia too?!

Any article that starts yapping about 2 nm lithography is full of shit. None of the current production at TSMC even has less than 10 nm
physical component size. They call it 7 nm as a cheap marketing gimmick.

You will never see conventional CPUs rendered with 2 nm resolution. Maybe quantum computer components can use this type of production
and leverage its intrinsic noise. But no freaking deterministic processor can function at the break down limit of the material continuum.
You have to read the actual research when evaluating claims by IBM and others of 2 nm lithography. All the press releases are Kiev
regime level cheeseball BS.

90nm with 200mm wafers is more than enough for military, space, and automotive chips. Existing fab capacity at Mikron and Angstrem-T is also more than enough for those applications. It is a matter of organization and keeping those fabs at high usage rate.

Once the public lens is away from Russia and demand for 28nm worldwide craters over the next two years I expect Russia to be able to find some place to fab 28nm chips outside Russia. There will be like three dozen fabs which can make those chips by then. Russia will be able to find someone to make them the chips. You will see. It is all a matter of getting the right corporate scheme. As long as Russia keeps those chips inside civilian government institutions and they aren't sold worldwide no one will care.

If Russia wanted to they could probably make a 65nm with 300mm wafers fab with all Chinese equipment right now. Problem is most designs Russia wants to produce which they currently outsource production are 28nm or better. It will take the Chinese at least two years to get that kind of equipment operational. And who knows what will be the production rate for it.

I think Russia should take a multiple pronged approach.

Like I said before Mikron and Angstrem-T production models should be revamped and it should be possible to switch production of a design from one factory to the other with minimal fuss by making them have some common fab processes. New suppliers for materials need to be found now that Europe isn't available as a supplier anymore. The existing production facilities need to be optimized and if necessary new 180nm and 90nm production processes should be licensed from China with minimum fuss. It is quite obvious that the 90nm production process Mikron currently uses, which was licensed from STMicro, is not optimal for making CPUs. Elbrus-2S+ made at TSMC Taiwan at 90nm has 500 MHz clockspeed, while the Elbrus-2SM made at Mikron Russia at 90nm has 300 MHz clockspeed. The lowest voltage for the Mikron chip is also higher. That isn't something you can just ignore. It is quite evident that the Mikron process or the design they made for Mikron process is performing worse. Angstrem-T supposedly got licenses for using 90nm IBM processes but I never heard of them actually putting them into production. The state also needs to fund the creation of chip designs to be manufactured in Russia to replace those chips which cannot be imported anymore. I am talking about things like control chips for vehicles, embedded systems for industrial applications, and the like. The consumer electronics sector is kind of beyond the scope of existing production facilities I think.

Russia should invest in production facilities for advanced packaging of chips. All the equipment for that can probably be imported from China right now. And Russia should drive production volume for the fabs up by creating some sort of incentive for using chips either packaged or diffused in Russia. The previous program which made incentives for chips designed in Russia was clearly not enough.

Russia should get Turkish and Chinese companies to open factories to make consumer electronics products in Russia proper. I am talking about washing machines, clothes dryers, freezers, air conditioners, and stupid things like that which use a lot of bulk steel and not as advanced electronics. They should push production of both those and cars and boats and airplanes. That will I think take the most advantage of the capabilities of Russian industrial output. They should make those companies either open factories in Russia to make chips, or use Russian factories to make chips for them.

Russia could also consider increasing their production output of lower complexity ICs which can be made with Chinese equipment like discrete electronics, LEDs, or other semiconductors for automotive and power electronics like inverters and the like. Production of energy intensive or petrochemical related materials for semiconductor production should also be incentivized. For example the manufacture of polysilicon for own use and export or that of electronic-grade ammonia.

Towards the middle or latter part of this decade once either the Chinese tools become available or Russia makes its own tools then it will be time to think of creating new fabs with more advanced equipment.

The consumer sector will have to rely on second sourcing of products in the meantime.

The sanctions only apply to things with Western content in them. In a couple of years China will have commercial fabs with 100% Chinese production tools and equipment in them.

Even today the Chinese government already has sanctions proof semiconductor production facilities using equipment made and operated by CETC which can make chips at 90nm or better. Those Chinese production facilities do not operate in the commercial market but are part of the Chinese MIC. I told that here before.

China has had sanctions on purchasing military grade equipment and components from the West since the Tienanmen Square incident in 1989. How do you think they make the chips for AESA radars and the avionics in their fighter aircraft? Russia's MIC only got similar sanctions after annexation of Crimea in 2014. So how come the Chinese have AESA radar on their aircraft and thermal sights on their tanks? They surely are not importing them.

The Chinese commercial sector is currently the market leader in security cameras and they are quickly moving towards dominance of the commercial camera sensor sector as well. Why do you think the US slapped sanctions on Hikvision, a commercial CETC subsidiary, and yet made a carveout so their own MIC can continue purchasing Hikvision equipment?

And sorry, but a more complex chip tends to be slower, not faster. So how come the Elbrus-2C+ has the same CPU cores, with extra DSP cores, and is faster? 500 MHz vs 300 MHz. It is quite simple. The 90nm process at TSMC is better than the one Mikron uses which they got from STMicro.

As for Russia making its own lithography equipment, it takes more than lithography equipment to make chips. The Chinese have been at this for over a decade already. Probably close to two. And you think the Russian industry will solve all those problems in less than a decade? I think you are being overly optimistic. The current plan only seems to be focused on lithography to begin with. What about making masks, and all that other crap? You need like a dozen different types of machine tools just on the main production line of a semiconductor fab. That is ignoring all the equipment you will need to make the materials to operate the fab.