Russian Electronics: Semiconductor and Processors

That Pavel guy you are quoting sounds like a real douche.

Especially his last part since already as mentioned above, they are building lithography equipment in 130nm down to 28nm in Russia and Belarus.

https://www.russiadefence.net/t3439p650-russian-electronics-semiconductor-and-processors#369506

This talk about the (current) lack of market for future Russian semiconductors is a bit of none, not just because the Russian products doesn't really exist yet but because a large part of the fundamental raw materials necessary to the production is controlled by Russia, and so it can decide how much each producer can produce. Add the fact that Taiwan (TSMC) joined the sanctions and Russia seems to be leaving WTO, and all become politically easier.

It is like developing a aircraft but using someone else engine. The engine producer will decide how many aircraft you can sell.

rigoletto wrote:This talk about the (current) lack of market for future Russian semiconductors is a bit of none, not just because the Russian products doesn't really exist yet but because a large part of the fundamental raw materials necessary to the production is controlled by Russia, and so it can decide how much each producer can produce. Add the fact that Taiwan (TSMC) joined the sanctions and Russia seems to be leaving WTO, and all become politically easier.

It is like developing a aircraft but using someone else engine. The engine producer will decide how many aircraft you can sell.

Full industrial autonomy is something Russia is in the process of achieving.   It is at least 80% of the way there.   In some sectors it is 100%
independent.   I do not see Russia being dependent on foreign IC fabrication for much longer.   People have this NATzO propaganda
induced notion that Russians cannot into high tech IC.   As if Russia does not have the scientific and engineering base to develop
this technology.   From all that I see the technological prerequisites are already in place.   It is just another import substitution project
driven by favourable financing.  

I am tired of being exposed to western racist excrement about how inferior Russians are.   As an example, back in the 1980s
when 8 bit personal/educational computers were dominant in the west, the USSR had 16 bit computers.  The limitation was that they
were not produced in the large volumes, a routine failure for the broken Soviet command economy which managed to squander the
advantages of such an economy.   Russia would have had 14 nm lithography if not for the endless economic instability.   Flipping from
a command economy to a market economy is not something that is casual and routine.   It is like changing the frame and bricks in
a standing house.   Russia was not supposed to recover and should have been split into a collection of banana republics under NATzO
control.   Reality is something different from what NATzO desires.

A lot of it was Soviet policy of putting industries in the other Soviet Republics or even Warsaw Pact satellites.
The Soviet Union could have made personal computers in large numbers. Even East Germany produced more personal computers back then.
As it stands to a large degree what you saw instead was the equivalent then to a workstation today. The Electronika BK had a single chip PDP-11.
Several Warsaw Pact satellites and Soviet republics made personal computers. But with the lack of an internal market and multiple languages in use in the Warsaw Pact the economies of scale weren't there.

I think this was a big mistake on the part of the Soviet Union. As the largest market in terms of electric, TV, and language standards they could have easily set the standard and then made small modifications for the other countries in the Warsaw Pact.

I suspect we might see the same thing play out today. In fact until Russia can import or make machine tools for advanced fabrication it will make more sense to have dumb terminals connect to a central processing facility to reduce the expense in mass semiconductors.

lancelot wrote:A lot of it was Soviet policy of putting industries in the other Soviet Republics or even Warsaw Pact satellites.
The Soviet Union could have made personal computers in large numbers. Even East Germany produced more personal computers back then.
As it stands to a large degree what you saw instead was the equivalent then to a workstation today. The Electronika BK had a single chip PDP-11.
Several Warsaw Pact satellites and Soviet republics made personal computers. But with the lack of an internal market and multiple languages in use in the Warsaw Pact the economies of scale weren't there.

I think this was a big mistake on the part of the Soviet Union. As the largest market in terms of electric, TV, and language standards they could have easily set the standard and then made small modifications for the other countries in the Warsaw Pact.

I suspect we might see the same thing play out today. In fact until Russia can import or make machine tools for advanced fabrication it will make more sense to have dumb terminals connect to a central processing facility to reduce the expense in mass semiconductors.

This is actually the route we are headed here in the west.  "Cloud Computing" which is just a fancier term for central computing and mainframe (unless you talk about FLUX network and its cryptocurrency backed around its form of Nodes acting as servers) because now prices on components are getting so damn high and people cant keep up to the demands from video game makers as an example.  So everything is going into a shitty service based structure which is absolutely abysmal by any measure IMO.  I mean, for workplaces, central computing using terminals to do day to day task is rather easy and cheap honestly.  I know I set up a few of them where I just used Sandybridge rack servers as they were dirt cheap, and using hypervisor in order to create environment's for people to terminal into and use on a day to day basis.  Works well and does what is intended - documents, internet, email, excel and presentations, chats, porn, etc.  But for home use, hell no.  I refuse to pay into all these services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Nvidia Now, Xbox Gamepass, etc.  I want to own my games and hardware.

GarryB wrote:They also need to look to the future and perhaps look at some way of reducing production costs and improved design to actually move forward and also overcome some of the limitations of existing technology... for instance they already have 3D printing technology using different metals at the same time... imagine simply 3D printing what you want including the electronics... complex 3D chips with massive parallel designs... clock speeds seem to have hit the speed limit of about 4 Ghz, and instead of trying for faster they have been going for extra processor cores on each chip, but of course that creates bottlenecks that will limit how fast the processors can practically operate...

In the 1980s the Commodore Amiga computer was one of the best available because it had specialised chips... so instead of southbridge and northbridge I/O chips and memory/graphics controller chips respectively there was a dedicated chip design for each role inside the computer to take the work strain off the CPU, so despite the pitiful slow clock speed of the 68000 motorolla chip, it could outperform 486 computers running at much higher clock speeds because the design was fixed and the variables of what hardware you were using was not as potentially variable as it could be with a PC.

A modern equivalent to removable modules or upgradable modules could be designed and built with future growth potential... make it a 128 bit computer motherboard with space for multiple chips to be installed for each role and you can scale the number of chips depending on the role the computer was to be used for... so a gaming computer might have 4 to 6 multicore graphics processing chips sharing its own dedicated memory slots, just as an example... the IBM clone design was successful because it used a standard that allowed backwards compatibility and you could upgrade components and reuse older computers for less demanding jobs or spend a bit more and upgrade them with state of the art components to be as good as any brand new store bought machine.

In comparison go to any university and look in their recycling stations or rubbish collection areas and see all the Apples that are now obsolete and got thrown out this year... because you can't upgrade their hardware and the current software requires higher hardware specs.

I remember a few years ago there was a sdelanounas article regarding 3D printing and future. One such future mentioned was the Moscow university of technology was looking at making circuit boards and SoC's using 3D printing tech. This can become a reality if Russia really pushes it. They can also look at 3D chip design as well.

As for your comment on Commodore Amiga - I loved those systems. At school we had an Amiga 4000. Solid piece of technology.

Yes, Russia could do dual processing technology or specialized chip designs where it offloads the processors tasks and each chip can be used for specific tasks. Mind you, those style of computing where a total bitch to program for. See the Tom and Jerry on the Atari Jaguar or the Sega Saturn as examples - Developers just wouldnt and couldn't put the time and effort into developing and getting the dual processing structures to actually work. Now days, things are a lot better but it is because it is all offloaded onto 1 CPU that does the tasks split among the various cores and threads. But in reality, co processors does a far better job as its far more efficient - see Elbrus 2SM+ with its DSP cores.

For average consumers though, this is where it could work out. Get the companies heavily involved with each other with the company who is making the chips (in this case, MCST) and let Baikal and rest concentrate on mobile market.

So the big thing everyone seemed to be worried about is servers all slowly dying and there are no new CPUs re sanctions
like the Intel Xeon ?

Mishustin just raised the tax free threshold to 1000 euros
does this mean lots of Intel server Xeon-type CPUs etc will be coming across the border to "private buyers" ?

not my area of expertise ?

but it does seem that small and medium enterprises in Russia in particular
as they are all switching over to Russian software asap
must surely be very interested in cloud based services to manage such a rapid cutover
I would be ....

which then makes servers and cloud services more important ?

whereas big companies have their own dedicated IT personnel to manage software cutovers internally ?

A lot of Russian companies which were buying or renting in hosting services in the West got their access cut. This means they will have to move to services in Russia. This increased the demand for Russian hosting services tremendously. It will be hard for the US to be able to control hardware sales for second hand chips anyway. So I think these companies will be able to get their services up and running.

lancelot wrote:A lot of Russian companies which were buying or renting in hosting services in the West got their access cut. This means they will have to move to services in Russia. This increased the demand for Russian hosting services tremendously. It will be hard for the US to be able to control hardware sales for second hand chips anyway. So I think these companies will be able to get their services up and running.

As I mentioned before, I was able to buy engineering samples and CPU's based upon certain regions in the past. Most of these V3/V4 Xeons which are more than powerful enough for everything from HPC setups to engineering, are no longer in circulation as they were pushed aside for newer chips. So in this regard, those chips can be had for dime a dozen on the used market in China and en mass. To the point that Chinese manufacturers are making their own motherboards ripping out the C602 chips from those server boards for their boards. More than good enough for any kind of this work. I used a lot of them.

other attraction for Russia with its chronic labour shortages
cloud computing allows concentration of your talent pool

pardon my ignorance
but the way I understand CPU design
it is like a rat maze ....

you either stick a compiler on the front and run fewer rat mazes thereafter .... very large instruction sets as in Elbrus
ie you essentially organise the rats before you send them into the maze

or you run no compiler and endlessly keep adding new mazes via more and more cores and transistors
to the point now where you are reaching atomic levels and the end is near ... ie like ARMs
ie you don't organise the rats at all - just create more and more doorways into the maze and let them sort it out randomly inside

and then generally these ARM type chips are better suited for databases
as you aren't doing much calculating just accessing data and requests mostly focused on throughput

and as the military and space tend to use "older 90nm chips" that are not prone to radiation but do lots of mathematical calculations
the Elbrus style chip which doesn't require lots of mazes is well suited

which leads us to the conclusion that databases and servers and the CPUs they use
are not what the Rus electronics industry has focused on at all .... as the big customers were the military and space industries and Rosatom it seems

but now non-Elbrus style CPUs are extremely important for say banks and comms ..... re clouds and transaction processing

whereas running factories etc on "older chips" is no big deal via desktop computers
as you are plugged into mains power anyway .... so running a fan is no big deal
and Elbrus style chips may be the better option

meanwhile
these super tiny >10nm CPUs are really about saving energy and reducing heat
mobile devices .... for longer battery life
and supercomputers re heat buildup and energy cost ( energy cost being of little concern to Russia)

and as a few of you guys have alluded you can run a supercomputer on lots of "older chips" you just need lots of energy
and a good cooling system .... and a bigger room
hardly the end of the world is it

so cracking 28nm manufacturing is all you really need and apparently you can get down to 14nm with the same tech
seems to me China and Russia will get there in the next 2-3 maybe 5years .... then what will the "superior" west do ?

my iPhone 7 runs an "ancient" 12-14nm chip
works perfectly well .....

anyway I have been reading your comments with increasing interest so thanks for all that
just trying to "compile" all your comments and thoughts .... to better understand this topic

The VLIW design of the Elbrus much like the EPIC variant of the Itanium requires the compiler to do more of the "low level" optimization.
The x86 architectures put out by Intel do a lot of this low level optimization in silicon (out of order execution, branch prediction, etc.).
So the x86 CPUs have more transistors than Elbrus at the base level (often the cache transistors are counted which obscures the issue).
The Elbrus does not need "7 nm" lithography to be competitive for HPC.

The other aspect of VLIW is that the CPU clock rate is lower by definition. This is not inferiority. There are fewer pipeline stages which
each take longer to execute because they are more complex. So comparing the GHz ratings of different architectures is apples and oranges
nonsense.

I think the Elbrus on a 28 nm process is not a waste of silicon. On 14 nm it is ideal and allows for more cores. Russia can move its production
from Taiwan to China for the Elbrus. Again, it does not need "7 nm" bleeding edge lithography.

Gazputin wrote:So the big thing everyone seemed to be worried about is servers all slowly dying and there are no new CPUs re sanctions
like the Intel Xeon ?

...
does this mean lots of Intel server Xeon-type CPUs etc will be coming across the border to "private buyers" ?
[]
whereas big companies have their own dedicated IT personnel to manage software cutovers internally ?

Parallel import is likely only in gray zone to my understanding as officially company doing this will be sanctioned. In short preiron likely yes. thought US processors are surely have security problems on HW level.

But in medium/long time why not to use native Russian processors in servers?
http://www.elbrus.ru


Not sure what you mean by "software cutovers" ? lack of windrows? or Oracle? Cloud is general trend in IT and Im glad Russia moves all inside country's. Will be surely safer for clinets and companies alike.

there are some really interesting tables on the planned CPU purchases for govt needs in this guys blog
but in general they seem to think 12-16nm is more than enough for their needs
it is dated November 2021

"Plan for the release and implementation of Russian microprocessors for computer technology, and what kind of processor Elbrus-4S3
29 November 2021
2,6k full reads
I came across here very interesting signs from the summer letter of the Executive Director of the Association of Developers and Manufacturers of Electronics I.A. Pokrovsky to the Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation V.V. Shpak dated 09.06.2001. From these tablets you can learn quite a lot of interesting information."

top table section talks of desktops and mobile users
bottom bit is about servers

Baikal and MCST even Yadro RISC-V CPUs in there at the bottom

Mr Electrobrain on Yandex Zen - post was back in November
where he got the info from I have no idea
I just remembered reading it a while ago
you guys jogged my memory

https://zen.yandex.ru/media/electromozg/plan-vypuska-i-vnedreniia-rossiiskih-mikroprocessorov-dlia-vychislitelnoi-tehniki-i-chto-za-processor-elbrus4s3-61a22dd1c5af6f62af390809?&

From Gazputin's link:



So the first gen Elbrus 8 core variant was on 28 nm.

For HPC systems they could package four CPU dies in a single package with a very large "L4" cache. The motherboards can be customized
for such large CPU packages. With four sockets one gets 4 x 4 x 8 = 128 cores per board. This is not too shabby.

For Russia power consumption at server centers should not be a limitation.

But among the Rostec's numerous projects sits Elbrus, an indigenous CPU family that has its roots in the 1970s.

As reported by our sister publication AnandTech, a new model has surfaced: the Elbrus 8CB.
It targets the same market as AMD’s Epic and Intel’s Xeon,
although it's unlikely you’ll ever get your hands on one, because they are only produced for servers and PCs owned by the Russian government.

The 8CB is an 8-core CPU, with a clock speed of 1.5GHz and, because it uses an old 28nm manufacturing process, spreads its 2.8 billion transistors on a rather large 333mm^2 die - far bigger than similar processors that use processes as small as 7nm.

On the face of it, the 8CB isn’t that bad at all, with peak double precision GFLOPS per core reaching 36. For context, the Fujitsu A64FX we covered a few days ago hits 70.4 with a 50% speed boost, while ARM's latest Cortex-X1 super core manages 48 with a 100% increase in clock speed.

Will we ever see an Elbrus PC? Will Rostec manage to move to a finer node and achieve faster processing speeds and cram in more cores? Well, given Elbrus CPUs are compatible with x86 and x86-64 via Binary Translation without Intel’s IP, they could be a winner for Russia - especially with some countries aiming to minimise dependence on Western technology.

... similar opinion - article date June 4 2020
all they need to do is get 28nm line up and running ... suspect that isn't far away

https://www.techradar.com/news/mysterious-new-cpu-from-russia-wont-threaten-domination-of-intel-and-amd-yet

They would not be able to get the tools or materials for a 28nm fab in the short or middle term. Even the Chinese are still trying to do this. And they have a much bigger market.
I already discussed this here. The most likely production will be Elbrus in 90nm. i.e. Elbrus-2SM.
And available plants will probably have their hands full making smart card chips for banks in near term.
A lot of people's cards will have to be replaced at once to replace Visa and Mastercard trash, not exactly easy.

I think Russia should outsource production of the smart cards to China. I doubt that is sanctioned yet.

the banks already said they would just keep the cards labelled as Visa and Mastercard going and they got rid of the expiry date too.
But yeah it seems MIR has 100% market share now ... eventually they will need millions of new cards - especially for international travellers

meanwhile they say they are issuing staggering numbers of digital MIR cards for online stuff to people who don't already have one
to load onto their smartphones

it is pretty ridiculous the expiry dates on cards anyway .... I must have cut up over 100 by now ...
for what purpose exactly ? creating more pollution ?

I did see a survey somewhere that said about 1/3 of Russians intend to get a dual MIR/UnionPay card
assume travellers and people who shop online in chinese online stores

think it was these guys

https://www.cnews.ru/news

they have a section called "technique" I decided to look at the other day
which tells people how to do stuff or choose stuff
eg

"Goodbye, Visa and Mastercard: How to Pay for Subscriptions and In-App Purchases in Times of Sanctions"

https://zoom.cnews.ru/publication/item/64291

I've never bothered having virtual cards on my phone ... couldn't be bothered learning it
but yes if I couldn't get hold of new plastic ... I'd learn pretty fast

all part of the "fun" of the 21st century ... soon everything will be in short supply
was watching a cooking program with my other 1/2 yesterday - they were bbq-ing some massive steaks
I said to her "this will be considered a porno movie in a decade or so "

Gazputin wrote:
I did see a survey somewhere that said about 1/3 of Russians intend to get a dual MIR/UnionPay card
assume travellers and people who shop online in chinese online stores

Union Pay is closing the gap to MC and VISA it is not a local Chinese card.

https://www.icbc-us.com/ICBC/%E6%B5%B7%E5%A4%96%E5%88%86%E8%A1%8C/%E5%B7%A5%E9%93%B6%E7%BE%8E%E5%9B%BD%E7%BD%91%E7%AB%99/EN/ProductsServices/Creditcard/FAQ/faq.htm

ICBC USA is proud to be the sole issuer of UnionPay cards in the US. In the US, UnionPay is accepted at over 80% of physical merchant stores and almost all ATMs, and the UnionPay network is adding new merchants every day. In the United States, Canada, Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean, UnionPay is partnering with Discover to be accepted in its network. To get good use of the card, simply find UnionPay or Discover logos at most of the physical retail stores. UnionPay card is also accepted at select top eCommerce site, such as Amazon.com, Ctrip.com, Zappos.com, Bloomingdales.com, macys.com, saks.com, neimanmarcus.com, drugstore.com, etc.

"Goodbye, Visa and Mastercard: How to Pay for Subscriptions and In-App Purchases in Times of Sanctions"

https://zoom.cnews.ru/publication/item/64291

I've never bothered having virtual cards on my phone ... couldn't be bothered learning it
but yes if I couldn't get hold of new plastic ... I'd learn pretty fast

all part of the "fun" of the 21st century ... soon everything will be in short supply
was watching a cooking program with my other 1/2 yesterday - they were bbq-ing some massive steaks
I said to her "this will be considered a porno movie in a decade or so "

so you want to use us app from Google ? this is the same sanctions shit as MC or Visa. Yes mobile payments ar eok as long as they are not managed by US

At least with Android you can install an application if you have the install file. You can even transfer install files to your memory card if you have one. On Apple's iOS you either get it from the online Apple store or you can't get it at all.

Sberpay .... Gazprombankpay
software seems the least of Russia's worries
every day there seems to be another "cardless payment option" on that CNews page

of course Unionpay is Chinese .... even my local Autoteller takes them in my country town
and dual branded MIR/Unionpay cards have been issued for quite a while
mainly by Eastern banks and banks like Gazprom that deal a lot with China
unlike what western media has been saying

I'm not interested in getting bogged down in endless pedantics on this subject
moving right along ...

CPUs
this is interesting for those of us mortals that aren't totally up to speed on CPUs etc
average life of CPU .... in various locations and uses

https://motherboardcpufan.com/how-long-cpu-last-average-processor-lifespan/

CPUs in hardworking servers ?
2-5 years ?
depending on how effective your cooling is and whether you are overclocking them ?

"Usually your hardware parts need replacement every four years. Again, it depends on your usage. If you are using it commercially then the cpu needs replacement in two years most of the time. For personal use it can last up to 4-5 years. It is obvious that commercial usage makes wear and tear more often than the personal one. "

does that sounds right to you IT gurus ?

does seem these servers and cloud computing is going to be a big deal for Russia .... for small and medium size businesses

where I come from is engineering and manufacturing and design

for "engineering samples" we used what was called "soft tooling"
a more "hand-made" product and the tools were only good for a limited run ... ie not useful for economic volumes

but we could do them in-house .... semi-handmade is probably a better description of "soft tooling"
the end result was good enough for durability testing etc .... fit and finish issues all that sort of stuff

and then once we had design signoff we went off and made "hard tooling" that would last 5-10 yrs of mass production

so the question I can't seem to find the answer to is
when Elbrus comes up with a new design ... do they need to get Taiwan to do the engineering samples too ?

or do they have a more manual process back in Moscow to at least do engineering samples ?

I don't know anywhere near enough about this subject
but you can see my question ....

sure they can't mass produce them - that has been covered ad nauseum
but can they do limited runs ? of say 28nm stuff ?

can't seem to get a real answer on that

I did look at what those GS guys were doing with Baikal in Kalinigrad
I thought they might be able to do "soft tool" engineering samples as Mike was suggesting ...

maybe ? they might be able to do limited runs ? but haven't cracked high volume stuff yet ?
Mike might be right ? they look the most likely candidates to me

from what I read of GS they were definitely intending to package the CPU
rather than get that process done in China or Taiwan post the fab work

interesting subject that's for sure

The lifespan of a properly cooled CPU in any HPC system is decades.   The hardware breaks for all sorts of other reasons first.
In particular faulty capacitors.  I have experienced a motherboard where one of them detonated.   The high maintenance part
has been hard disks but these are being replaced by SSDs as the capacity of the latter becomes viable.   The storage demand
is insane (petabytes).  

The degradation of high resolution ICs is faster than the 286 and 486 era coarse lithography ICs but it is definitely nowhere as
fast as 5 years.   The fastest degradation is obsolescence even though Moore's law is dead.   HPC systems are bought for hundreds
of millions of dollars with an upgrade plan where the hardware is replaced after two years (or longer).   Not all of them are this
expensive and high turnover but none of them are used to exhaustion like vintage PCs.

However, with the "5 nm" ICs supposedly showing up soon, we have the problem of intrinsic error from the approach to the
material continuum thermodynamics limit.   I have not seen any information that explains how this problem is going to be addressed.
All of our software is 100% deterministic.   It would make more sense to move to quantum computing if probabilistic characteristics
need to be dealt with.   But quantum computing is not ready for prime time.   So I expect a hardware stagnation period to arrive as we
hard stall on IC resolution.

The reason of why servers in datacenters are usually replaced every 2...5 years is the warrant expiration. If the server break and someone lose a lot of money they can shift the responsibility to Intel/AMD.

I have a friend who work in datacenter in here and they just replace servers between ages in there. The last time I have with him (before the pandemic) they were replacing their servers, those that used DDR2 memory yet (I don't remember the processor model etc.).

Aquarius makes servers and PCs for the Russian government sector that is certified secure from backdoors and other
NATzO tricks. The video above is actual hardware and not stock filler. Russia can make competitive motherboards
and systems today. It can handle a transition to domestic IC manufacturing at 28 nm and lower in the next 10 years.
Actually any such move is not about 28 nm. The equipment type enables a jump to 10 nm (real resolution).

Rosatom are heavy hitters .... momentum is building fast it seems

"T-Com LLC (an enterprise of Rosatom's fuel company TVEL) launched a workshop for large-node assembly of telecommunications equipment at the site of the Moscow Polymetals Plant. This was reported to CNews by representatives of TVEL.

The workshop performs work on the assembly of products, its labeling and packaging, software installation and testing. The technological structure of the workshop is organized on the principle of flexibility and scalability (if necessary, the number of technological posts and the volume of output can be increased). With the current configuration, the planned capacity is 1200 pieces of equipment per month."

https://www.cnews.ru/news/line/2022-04-04_ooo_t-kom_zapustilo_proizvodstvo

mobile networks

seems there are 4x mobile companies
each one using dif equipment .... 1x Huawei , 1x Ericsson, 1x Nokia .... 4th not sure
what will happen there ?

"Rostec established the Spectr company, which will be engaged in the serial production of telecommunications equipment for 4G networks and next generations of communication, including 5G. For this purpose, “Spectrum” will create around itself a cooperation of Russian equipment manufacturers. From 2023, telecom operators will be required to use domestic solutions when deploying 4G, and by 2024 at least 10 thousand 5G base stations using Russian equipment should be produced in the country."

https://chernayakobra.ru/rostec-established-a-5g-equipment-manufacturing-company/

... a snowball rolling down a hill ... getting bigger and bigger

software side just as impressive ... certified by govt as being "US-proof" to get Govt contracts at any level of govt
they have their own Linux based OS systems popping up everywhere ....
MyOffice and P7-Office replacing Microsoft Office
Postgres-Pro replacing Microsoft DBMS and Oracle ... another open-source origin base like Linux
the list goes on and on ... on the software front

they have Kaspersky anti-virus (who control MyOffice now)
Yandex is basically the Russian Google ....

on the website side of things ....
Rutube .... booking systems replacing Booking.com ... it never seems to stop

MIR cards and payment system of course ...

it does seem Russians are very entrepreneurial ... despite all the western stereotypes


best thing is of course all that revenue that used to go OS ....
is staying home and feeding the local IT industry

interesting thing is Russian Current Account ...
if they can maintain a reasonable level of commodity exports
imports are going to plummet ..... balance of trade will go hugely positive