Russian Electronics: Semiconductor and Processors

If the West stops selling high-tech electronics for the space industry to Russia, then Russia should deny them a high-tech service too - launches for satellites, as well as men & material to the ISS.
It's only fair   

Russia could also refuse to sell the US the rocket motors they are using for their new rockets to go into space in 2020 and beyond and take them to mar etc.

I think the best target would of course be the NATO supply route through Russia they are using to withdraw from Afghanistan through... easy target really.

The USA and NASA have plenty of alternatives to the RD-180 rocket motor for any future space exploration plans, although in the short term they probably are dependent on the supply of Russian made motors. The USA is probably rethinking its dependency on a politcally unreliable partner as a source of such a critical technology.

BlackArrow wrote:The USA and NASA have plenty of alternatives to the RD-180 rocket motor for any future space exploration plans, although in the short term they probably are dependent on the supply of Russian made motors. The USA is probably rethinking its dependency on a politcally unreliable partner as a source of such a critical technology.

1.) The unreliable partner is the U.S. in this instance, it's the same partner that banned China from joining the ISS which most astro-physicists condemned that action as a politically motivated act of arm-twisting, due to the fact that the Pentagon feared the rising power and prestige of China...even the NASA scientists themselves opposed the decision.

2.) If the U.S. could easily replace Russian rocket engines then why is it taking themselves so long to do it? Theoretically they can with private industries by 2017, but those same private industries are the same ones involved with unreliable and costly military R&D projects. Those include hangar queens like the F-22, B-2 Spirit, and now potentially the F-35, the same people who struggle to produce a long range SAM on par with the out of production S-300 SAM. The RD-180 rocket engines have a proven reliable track record that spans multiple decades, and if the U.S. aerospace industries struggle so much with the F-35 program then what makes you think they can easily replace proven Russian rocket technology?

2.) If the U.S. could easily replace Russian rocket engines then why is it taking themselves so long to do it? Theoretically they can with
private industries by 2017, but those same private industries are the same ones involved with unreliable and costly military R&D projects.

Dead on target.

U.S can immediately create a saturn kind of launch vehicle in 5 days.. but only in dreams.  
U.S thinks that Rockets fly with semiconductor  and microchips.

F-35 overloaded with electronics ..no one imagines software developments taking decades to develop..

U.S thinks that its semiconductor global giants Intel, Arm, Cisco, Nvdia will develop rockets and fuel technology..
This is hilarious..

U.S could not develop a single serial produced supersonic missile.

U.S tried to develop HYpersonic projects X-37, X-43 ..all non sense.

When U.S air force and navy realized they could not develop a single sustainer for hypersonic vehicle..

...Then they gave the go ahead to Sandia labs (Nuke device maker   to develop hypersonic missile..  )

Sandia labs began  testing a 50 year old NAVAL ICBM (Intermediate range) and they renamed that Ballistic missile as advanced hypersonic vehicle..

It proves that U.S is not capable to produce "anything" in rocket and missile technology.

It only makes a show of its financial power  and some industrial giants and tries to act as though its the only super power in the world.


But putting things in perspective ..
U.S has decisive lead in semiconductor and processor fabrication so Russia must find alternatives for that.

Hannibal Barca wrote:Semiconductor and pharmaceutical are the only two industries where USA has a big lead of strategic sense (not commercial, because commercial is an other animal altogether).
A very big one. In semiconductor industry though, they are pretty much frozen for 6-7 years already, it's just that nobody else filled that gap just YET.
Anyway technology is not the problem, nor brain drain where USA finally stopped having this loads of brilliant minds coming in. So no danger for losing schedule, to the contrary USA relies more upon the cooperation of others.

The HUGE AND INSOLVENT (so far) problem of Russia is the commercialization of their know how. They are terrible in this aspect and they stuck to communist patterns which don't help at all.

But "American" semiconductors are largely produced in India and China:

http://www.gao.gov/assets/260/251352.pdf

Big One:

Elbrus microprocessor-4C ready for serial production

Microprocessor Elbrus-4C , the new development of the Russian company ZAO MCST, passed all test cycle and is ready for serial production.

Today Elbrus-4C - the high-performance microprocessor in the company's portfolio. Elbrus-4C - 64-bit general-purpose microprocessor. It contains 4 cores running at 800 MHz, supports three channels of DDR3-1600 memory. Supported by the Association to 4 chips in a multiprocessor system with shared memory. Processor manufactured on 65 nm technology, its average power of 45 watts. Detailed specifications CPU Elbrus-4C can be seen in  the catalog .

Elbrus-4C continues the line of microprocessors architecture "Elbrus" , developed in the MCST. Per cycle per core of the new processor can perform 23 operations, whereas for RISC processors like the this figure is several times lower. Processors have developed support for floating-point operations: total processing power of four cores is about 50 GFLOPS single-precision and 25 GFLOPS double precision. Despite the relatively low clock speed, in many real problems Elbrus microprocessor-4C provides performance comparable with leading foreign microprocessors.

Eat your heart out deniers.  Russia is slowly, but surely coming back into the ring in semiconductor manufacturing!  This will be the big step to making server grade processors that will end up in an HTC enviornment in the future.

Industrial robot Gelios20 Togliatti

Universal technological industrial robot created by a group of companies "Robocon," can be used in many advanced technological processes. For example, for attitude control of tools and workpieces during laser welding of complex three-dimensional structures of a thin metal sheet. It can be used for innovative plasma welding and most widespread in Russia arc welding process. Gelios -20 suitable for "adhesive bonding" as applying adhesives and sealants are also included in the functions of the product. He is able to solve the problems of plasma, laser and waterjet cutting. Gelios -20 allows automated production functions unloading / loading and manipulation, which excludes the impact of human factors on the production and assembly line during monotonous work requiring high precision. So

Very promising Multicellular architecture from Russia: http://www.multiclet.com/
Having single Chip capable of massive paralel computing is great.
This chip isntead of having cores, is having cells. This cells are elemetary units in chips.
Like memory registers and calculation units.
This chip is capable of much more calculation in real time than standard western multicore CPUs.
the only problem still remains is relative low frequency.
But i hope they are well on their way to catch up with Nvidia, Intel and AMD.

However there is still no sign of a 32 nm fab in Russia.
This IS a neccessary step. State of the art electronics are CPUs and GPUs, not some 8bit/16bit microcontrollers.
Russia have a good foundation of Microprocessor architecture and design, but they need manufacturing facilities.
You cannot manufacture such critical components as CPUs that are an issue of natural security in Taiwan or outside the country in general.
You have to have your own fabrication facility and not just one, but two atleast (for strategic pruposes).
Building such a plant is not a matter of couple of months, but years and it is veeeery expensive.
And they know they will HAVE to do it eventually.
I hope they are not waiting for some sanctions or another blacklisting to come into effect to start even thinking about it.
Because as i said, it takes years to built and relying on China is not a good option. China is intelligence hungry not just towards US but Russia as well, i would not be suprised having found backdoors in Chinese manufactured chips.

Multiclet processors are specifically for specialized apps. Keydrives, satellites (this was recent) and microcontrollers. Its architecture is close to that of the Intel Itanium which are good number crunchers but not good in most others. This is a very modular variant.

MCST makes microprocessors of 32/64 bit and their newest showcase this year is a quad core up to 1ghz and 65nm topology. Any ones for smaller topology is made in Taiwan.

Turk1 wrote:Russian electronics are crap.  When was the last time you bought Russian computer, TV, or anything?  Turkey makes all this advanced and ships it to Europe, the most demanding technology customers.

Yeah when I think of advanced electronics, Turkey is the name that comes to mind right away.

lol.

TR1 wrote:

Turk1 wrote:Russian electronics are crap.  When was the last time you bought Russian computer, TV, or anything?  Turkey makes all this advanced and ships it to Europe, the most demanding technology customers.

Yeah when I think of advanced electronics, Turkey is the name that comes to mind right away.

lol.

Old post from 2009. But lol.

MCST built and tested server with 4 Elbrus 4C processors

In the server has 4 microprocessor "Elbrus-4C" 800 MHz, made in a factory on the technological process TSMC 65nm. Average power consumption of one microprocessor is 45 watts.
Performance: 25 gigaflops on the 64-bit floating-point and 50 gigaflops on 32-bit.
The motherboard uses a controller peripheral interfaces KPI 1991VG1YA ("south bridge") that supports all necessary water-O interfaces such as USB 2.0 - 2 ports, SATA 2.0 - 4 ports, IDE - 2 channel PATA-100, PCI-Express v 1.0a 8 lines, Ethernet 1 Gbit / s, sound interface controller AC-97 2 channel and others.

On this server MCST together with KB "Panorama" was tested performance of the domestic GIS "Operator" development of KB "Panorama".
In the computer system was installed AMD Radeon graphics card with support for hardware accelerated 3D-graphics. The operating system used OS "Elbrus" , which includes staff development tools, including the compiler in C / C + + platform Elbrus.
GIS operator to transfer to the new platform was held recompile source software in automatic mode. The test result showed full functionality of GIS operator at work on hardware and software platform Elbrus, as well as the high speed of the system, sufficient staff to work comfortably

Very impressive results with a processor with only 800mhz clock speed. Next southbridge chipset set for 2015 will incorporate sataIII and hopefully they expand the 4C for higher clock speeds and lower topology to fit more transistors and lower power consumption. Just increasing core clock speeds will incorporate a massive performance boost.

But, of course, its the software that is also very important. So lets hope there is software efficiency.

Here is information regarding a quick summery of Russian microprocessor and technology:

http://zoom.cnews.ru/publication/item/51620/1

Hannibal Barca wrote:Yes all this is cool but I am dummie, so we are back to square one. Can I somehow buy and use for my PC or server any of this products?
As always is with Russian industry commercialization is the Achilles's heel.

Not yet as the Elbrus-4C is still in testing.  This server mentioned is in testing.  And this will be the real first commercial processor from MCST as the Elbrus-2C+ is military still but was tested under civil use.  Rumor is, they are also bringing Elbrus 2C+ to the civil market as well, a cheaper alternative to 4C, without the DSP cores.

Chances are, you will be able to purchase it in the near future for your civil use, but you may be only able to order it with a motherboard, as it looks like they solder it to the mobo.

Majority of the processors are mass produced in Taiwan, this will be no different.  First batches came from Angstrom plant.  But afterwards, majority will be made abroad.

Hannibal Barca wrote:Great, the moment is out send me notification to order. Same goes for the first semi-decent Lada. For the first Antonov private jet I 'm afraid you have to ring an other door   

Well, you can get yourself the Lada Granta.  Sales of that vehicle is big, and it is a good quality car for cheap (9K to start).  Fastest selling car in Russia and CIS.  It is now being exported to EU countries.  Guess it is doing good!

Performance of the Elbrus-4C in FLOPS testing is very close to the Core i7 series processors. Server mentioned in link I posted is 4 of those processors, making it 16 cores. I am thinking of purchasing one in 2015 when the newer South Bridge Chipset is released so it has SATAIII (eSATA as well), and will be much better system for me to use. By then, it will be in production.

Kraftway last year purchased $1.3M in terms of equipment to make custom motherboards. I will be interested if they will make custom boards for Elbrus processors. Since Kraftway is a customer of MCST.

Hannibal Barca wrote:Great this should be a decent server if we see it hit the market and a custom motherboard is a much needed innovation.

Well, like I said, my understanding is that Kraftway now has the ability to make custom motherboards: http://www.kraftway.ru/en/about/milestones/

In 2013 the company invested $ 1,5 M to launch a state-of-the-art SMT line for the production of motherboards designed by Kraftway for special needs.

So besides MCST/INEUM, Kraftway may have the ability to make motherboards themselves as well. If I had the money myself, I would invest in a startup facility for making motherboards, as I know people who made them in the past. Unfortunately, I do not have such money. But would be cool if they send off license production for motherboards to Foxconn and other companies. Maybe someone will get the ability to startup company.

Elbrus 4C (or codename 2S) is a superscalar processor and is meant for server based tasks. Performance wise though, is quite impressive and so far, sounds like it is very powerful. Problem is, how will the average person get ahold of this processor, without having to go through and buying a PC outright from Kraftway?

Hey sepheronx, can you give some details and updates about SEMICON 2014 and it's relations with Russian and global tech industry, are the products displayed at SEMICON good enough for the Russian military to be self-sufficient in microchips, semiconductors, etc.? Anything significant on display, any new things of worth?

The world's first review of the Russian 4-core Elbrus-4C.

Part 1 - History
Part 2 - Architecture
Part 3 - Test

Now before anyone goes on a tirade regarding it, do not forget it is 700mhz and they are comparing it to a core i7 2600 which is 3.4ghz, as well as testing was very quick as they only had access to the 700mhz variant and all three being tested were running single core.

If we were to theoretically put the Elbrus 4C to the same core speed, then it should be quite comparable to the processor, but due whatever the reason is, they have the core speed quite low. Now this is still a testing unit and was a showcase. So I wonder if there will be any improvements prior. But, regardless, a good step in the right direction and am interested in finding out how well it performs in multicore situations and how well it scales depending on clock speeds.

but due whatever the reason is, they have the core speed quite low.

I've read an article about it. Something about it's architecture... I'm no IT expert.

Still it's designed as an industry processor iirc.

Yes, I read that too but I also read its initial core speed was to be 1GHZ, so theoretically, we may see a 1 or more ghz model.

For what is needed, this processor may be overkill. Although, I would be interested to see server enviornment in a cluster of these (hpc).

The other thing too, is the software behind it all, and how well optimized. You can tell from the GOST test, where its built around Elbrus processor, it beats the Intel. So optimization of software is the next step.

But apparently, I was wrong about openness of this processor. Apparently it is only for inudstry purposes and not for the general public really. So I would be interested to know when they will release Elbrus 2SM which is supposed to be commercial.