Russia wants to replace US computer chips with local processors

[mandrom]

Edit: Appears to be manufactured at TSMC, which is who makes GPUs for AMD and Nvidia, and SoCs for apple, etc. Not Russian silicon?

Yes, currently manufactured in TSMC as it was in testing by Elbrus as Russian govt was initally skeptical and not willing to invest ,though Russian govt is modifing the fab at zelenograd for Elbrus-4 as Elbrus is proven its claims and they are now getting the necessary money from Rus govt.

@mandrom

I am a fairly experienced computer hardware enthusiast. You are basically using a meaningless metric when comparing the speed of CPUs and are unaware of what a GPU is capable of.

The best part is that is easy to prove all of us wrong. Link to some verifiable benchmarks in an apples-to-apples comparison, and you win the day.

And yet only Titan Supercomputer is the only supercomputer using GPU's and it has had several software issues and bugs ,though many are being sorted out or have been sorted out .There was a case of DNA simulation which revealed problems in Titan and the GPU concept underwent debugging And Tianhe-2 is the leader and uses CPU's not Titan which is second fastest and a Jaguar supercomputer pumped up by GPU/CPU combo.Plus titan is much more expensive compared to Tianhe-2.

Like I said before GPU is a supplement,CPU is still the brain .


And yes,almost every american claims to be expert or from military,US numero uno blah blah . yeah ,yeah ,we know your standard drill .Now go back to cheering America! america! america!

There are several reasons behind the popularity of Intel core over other products, and efficient Floating Point Operation is just one of those many reasons. Intel's instruction set is very rich and has become a standard for the Industry.

Just for the information of the forum members above 95% of all Microprocessors consumed by the industry are 8-bit and 16-bit Harvard Architecture Microcontrollers and not the high end CPUs used in PCs, Mainframes and SCs. Almost all major countries can produce these chips locally. Even India manufactures microprocessors and micro-controllers. Major educational institutions like IITs in India have VLSI labs.

intel is popular because it was a leader in cpu tech. Now,there are alternatives and they are catching up. And NSA and its corporate espionage has unnerved many executives who do suspect that their sensitive data is going to foreign corporates(ones in USA).

 

[Schutz]

All competition is good competition but this is not competition, its not necessary for a start. Ignore the nationalist stuff and at the end of the day, a consumer wants to pay for a chip that provides good performance for a good price, we dont care where its coming from, hell most the stuff we buy these days is from China/Taiwan/Germany etc anyway so I really dont care where it comes from, as long as I buy it locally its not an issue, no one can ever match Intel commercially, probably ever. Its a fucking CPU, I dont care if its not British, I want it to work adequately, which they do a pretty damn good job at, it makes no difference if it was made here or elsewhere...clutching at nationalistic straws.

 

[Developereo]

This is very true.

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

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

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

Absolutely. As they say, you have to be in it to win it.

There are several factors at play here: the performance characteristics of a single chip are still important.

In the military sector, an avionics package built on a chip which is faster and can do more work for less power, under broader operating conditions, will be superior to one that uses inferior hardware. The US will likely retain an edge in the hardware space for quite some time, but China and Russia can narrow the gap to the point where superior firmware or software can make up the difference, and then some.

In the civilian sector, the competition would be even more fierce since most consumers don't want to pay a premium for the absolute cutting edge technology. If a competitor is close enough and much cheaper, it will cut into the leaders' sales.

Also, on the parallel computing front, the fact that Chinese supercomputers are.running dominant shows once again that software is becoming a much more important part of the picture. Most of the supercomputers use off-the-shelf standard chips. The trick is in the algorithms linking up the chips into a coherent matrix and China has shown that it is leading that race.

 

[Firemaster]

@mandrom

I am a fairly experienced computer hardware enthusiast. You are basically using a meaningless metric when comparing the speed of CPUs and are unaware of what a GPU is capable of.

The best part is that is easy to prove all of us wrong. Link to some verifiable benchmarks in an apples-to-apples comparison, and you win the day.

Hi,
Dont mind ,but does Ocguy stand for OverClockerguy? coz this kinda username looks more suitable in computing forums.

 

[A.P. Richelieu]

Have you heard about something called code bloating? Even some versions of Open Source Linux are known to be containing back-doors in certain modules. Not everybody can read and analyze thousands of lines of code (not including the government agencies).

Yes, OpenSSH has more security holes than Swiss Cheese.

 

[Reza Ali]

Naree Taqbeer Allah hu Akber

 

[OCguy]

Hi,
Dont mind ,but does Ocguy stand for OverClockerguy? coz this kinda username looks more suitable in computing forums.

You are correct about the meaning, good sir! Although the area I live in can also be abbreviated as OC, it is referring to my computer hobby.

I realize it is not very intimidating to other PDF members that I may find myself locked with in a keyboard battle, but "MuricaNukeRaptorB2KillDeathDie" was already taken when I registered.

intel is popular because it was a leader in cpu tech. Now,there are alternatives and they are catching up. And NSA and its corporate espionage has unnerved many executives who do suspect that their sensitive data is going to foreign corporates(ones in USA).

Intel still is the leader by a mile, and has an R&D budget that is larger than some governments'. Like any other technological achievement, it cannot be accomplished with willpower or wishing alone. It takes a ton of money, and the top brains in the world. Right now, those are attracted by American companies and being manufactured in China/Taiwan. I don't even consider them a purely American company in that regard.

I am typing this on a 22nm Intel chip, meanwhile they have overcome the insane technical barriers of 14nm, with Broadwell hitting the shelves this year. AMD/Global Foundries has hit a wall @ 32nm, and TSMC has had years of delays on 20nm SoC, which they are renaming 16nm w/FinFETs for the HP sector.

Basically all Russia is doing is paying a Taiwanese company to put their name on an inferior store-brand chip, so they can be sure there are no physical back-doors on die.

 

[Firemaster]

Intel still is the leader by a mile, and has an R&D budget that is larger than some governments'. Like any other technological achievement, it cannot be accomplished with willpower or wishing alone. It takes a ton of money, and the top brains in the world. Right now, those are attracted by American companies and being manufactured in China/Taiwan. I don't even consider them a purely American company in that regard.

I am typing this on a 22nm Intel chip, meanwhile they have overcome the insane technical barriers of 14nm, with Broadwell hitting the shelves this year. AMD/Global Foundries has hit a wall @ 32nm, and TSMC has had years of delays on 20nm SoC, which they are renaming 16nm w/FinFETs for the HP sector.

Basically all Russia is doing is paying a Taiwanese company to put their name on an inferior store-brand chip, so they can be sure there are no physical back-doors on die.

And this is what I wanted to say in my previous post.
Since you are an enthusiast you must have been knowing that how much AMD is struggling to match single intel x64 core, even their recent steamroller core is unable to match single sandy core let alone Haswell on AVX2 and some folks here trying to say Russian will nearly match strongest x64 core on 64bit ARM .

 

[mandrom]

Basically all Russia is doing is paying a Taiwanese company to put their name on an inferior store-brand chip, so they can be sure there are no physical back-doors on die.

Elbrus-2S was developed same way. For initial development and testing they MCST got TSMC to produce Mcst design and only after it was proven Russian implemented its production in Zelenograd. Same procedure being implemented again for elbrus-4c. You can contact MCST or Kraftway for the details.

Intel still is the leader by a mile, and has an R&D budget that is larger than some governments'.

Yes,did I deny this. But russians have caught and the narrowed the gap considerably to around 3-5 years .Now by 2018-2020 ,the gap should be 1-2 years and considering what MCST has achieved with Elbrus-2S at Maks demonstrating a speed of 30 Gflops per core for a bloody 90 nm chip .Yes. A 90 nm ,same chips which gave 10 gflops in 2010. If they can do that to a 90 nm ,I wonder how far they could juice up the Elbrus-4C. They haven't juiced up the elbrus-4c fully yet.

Taiwanese company to put their name on an inferior store-brand chip

But,non-US corporates and govts are very concerned about their sensitive data and the intel/amd backdoors. Hence,it doesn't matter. What Snowden has done is something that no Govt or corporate could do in damaging the credibility of US govt and corporate America. A lot of companies have left US based Cloud servers and diversifying from US software and hardware and CPU was the thing where USA had monopoly. and .Particularly in the corporate server segment ,Govt servers and military segment there is good demand scope for elbrus.Russian govt have given orders to Kraftway for Monoblock with elbrus-4c once they MCST have the fabs online in zelenograd.And once Elbrus proves via third party demonstrations that its chips have no backdoors,the demand for the so called very inferior 'Elbrus' will be good for there will be data security and even corporates/govts from EU/india and other latin countries will likely order these servers for data security and brazil should be a very likely client after the Petrobras NSA fiasco .And I have reason to believe MCST will go for third party tests in front of industry experts to prove and verify their product as Russian govt wants MCST to sell its chips in open market now.There have been objections by the russian military before also ,but it seems Russian govt is trying to change things .

This will not be possible for loongson chips though they are excellent ,but chinese hardware is known to have backdoors.Likely it will be a hit in China though in the gaming and PC segment and govt and military.

And this is what I wanted to say in my previous post.
Since you are an enthusiast you must have been knowing that how much AMD is struggling to match single intel x64 core, even their recent steamroller core is unable to match single sandy core let alone Haswell on AVX2 and some folks here trying to say Russian will nearly match strongest x64 core on 64bit ARM .

You can talk to Khathi and sephonrx on military photos. The leaps that MCST has demonstrated is considerable considering that in 2003-04 ,the gap b/w Russia and West was 30 years .Today its 3-5 years. And if MCST continues course ,then it will be 1-2 years by 2018 or nil gap.

GPGPU compute programming is still immature and pain in a$$ according to developers but it is not that it can't be perfcted.

Call me when it is perfected. D-wave was saying that it has created quantum computers and when field tests were recently performed turns out it does not stand up to the claims at all.

 

[Firemaster]

please show us the benchmarks when 64 bit ARM reaches the 1/3 of IPC of single x64 old sandy core. Making indigenous chips for Govt.,strategic and sensitive equipment and institutional body is very good but imposing it on comon public is not.

Call me when it is perfected. D-wave was saying that it has created quantum computers and when field tests were recently performed turns out it does not stand up to the claims at all.

OpenCL 2.0, CUDA6 and in future with HSA, Parallel computing is going to touch new highs on desktops, mobile phones , servers, workstations, laptops. Quantum computing is a distant thing and not fully backed by big corporate-s.

 

[Firemaster]

Even the Real time Ray-tracing is possible on GPGPU with 8-Titans which is distant drm for 8 CPUs.

 

[cirr]

Don't know about Russia，or other countries for that matter。

But you sure will see a lot less American IT products，both hardware and software，in China in a couple of years。

American IT products are simply not safe from the national security point of view。

And they aren't THAT good。

Those countries which want to remain totally naked before Americans' prying eyes are “free” to continue treating American products as godsend。

 

[mandrom]

please show us the benchmarks when 64 bit ARM reaches the 1/3 of IPC of single x64 old sandy core. Making indigenous chips for Govt.,strategic and sensitive equipment and institutional body is very good but imposing it on comon public is not.


OpenCL 2.0, CUDA6 and in future with HSA, Parallel computing is going to touch new highs on desktops, mobile phones , servers, workstations, laptops. Quantum computing is a distant thing and not fully backed by big corporate-s.

please show us the benchmarks when 64 bit ARM reaches the 1/3 of IPC of single x64 old sandy core. Making indigenous chips for Govt.,strategic and sensitive equipment and institutional body is very good but imposing it on comon public is not.

What Russia tells its common public is none of your business . Same can be said by other people where indian policy towards tribals is concerned which is much much worse.

please show us the benchmarks when 64 bit ARM reaches the 1/3 of IPC of single x64 old sandy core.

Elbrus can run on VLIW and x64 architecture and if further details are released you will find them on military photos or IT forums. I don't think Elbrus use ARM though I will have to verify

Making indigenous chips for Govt.,strategic and sensitive equipment and institutional body is very good but imposing it on comon public is not

Why? and who the hell are you to lecture? What Russia is doing is for national security. Intel/Amd is threat to national security and should be treated as such and dealt with stringently.Frankly, Russia should start imposing very heavy tariffs on sales of computers using intel/AMD and give necessary incentives to Kraftway.Also,the money earned by the tariffs should be used to fund the improvement of the Elbrus chips. Win win for russian microelectronics industry @senheiser

Don't know about Russia，or other countries for that matter。

But you sure will see a lot less American IT products，both hardware and software，in China in a couple of years。

American IT products are simply not safe from the national security point of view。

And they aren't THAT good。

Those countries which want to remain totally naked before Americans' prying eyes are “free” to continue treating American products as godsend。

I agree . But many indians love american stuff too much. Using american computers is not safe for intellectual property you are developing also.

But you sure will see a lot less American IT products，both hardware and software，in China in a couple of years

I won't be surprised if Russian govt bans or starts imposing huge tariffs on intel/AMD products.Also I expect russian corporates being discouraged from using intel/AMD products on account of russian govt policies being formulated. Looking at how elbrus is improving,Russia can kick out intel/AMD out of Russia. It will be Good riddance from Espionage corporate america.

 

[Firemaster]

What Russia tells its common public is none of your business . Same can be said by other people where indian policy towards tribals is concerned which is much much worse.

It is not about tribal rights and I dont know what they say about tribals but for comon people of any country who don't carry any national secret, imposing ban upon certain electronic hardware item coz of nationalism doesn't make sense.

 

[mandrom]

It is not about tribal rights and I dont know what they say about tribals but for comon people of any country who don't carry any national secret, imposing ban upon certain electronic hardware item coz of nationalism doesn't make sense.

Imposing ban/heavy tariffs on electronic hardware on account of national security for closing backdoor and stimulating national industry is fine . Russian money for Russian products. If you want intel then pay the heavy tariffs and that money should be sent to russian R&D . If you don't like it's your problem not Russia's.

Even the Real time Ray-tracing is possible on GPGPU with 8-Titans which is distant drm for 8 CPUs.

Yet CPU continues to be the brain of the computer not GPU.Thats enough to say.