Russian Government's New Semiconductor Plan: Local 28nm by 2030
As it's being ostracized and sanctioned by much of the world for its war against Ukraine, Russia is building up plans to revive its ailing local manufacturing of semiconductors, since it cannot get chips from the usual suppliers. The country's new chip plan involves a rather massive investment over the next eight years, the goals don't exactly sound ambitious. For example, while TSMC plans to hit 2nm by 2026, Russia wants 28nm local chip manufacturing by 2030.
Russia's government has developed a preliminary version of its new microelectronics development plan that requires investments of around ₽3.19 trillion ($38.43 billion) by 2030. The money will be spent on the development of local semiconductor production technologies, domestic chip development, datacenter infrastructure, developing of local talents, and marketing of homebrew chips and solutions, reports Cnews.
On the semiconductor manufacturing side of matters, the country plans to spend ₽420 billion ($5 billion) on new fabrication technologies and their ramp-up. One of the short-term goals is to ramp up local chip production using a 90nm fabrication technology by the end of the year. A longer-term goal is to establish manufacturing using a 28nm node by 2030, something TSMC did in 2011.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @01:45PM (1 child)
Good luck with Boris the steam powered CPU.
Fuck Russia though.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:04PM
You can plan anything you want. I plan to sleep with Cara Delevingne by the end of 2022, and I reckon I've actually got a bigger chance of success than Russia's plan to build a 90nm fab in the same time interval.
The thing is, to build any of kind of fab you need to buy a range of tech from a range of companies, almost all of whom are in countries that are sanctioning Russia. In particular, the high tech needed in this case will be at the top of the sanctions lists. They haven't got a hope.
Oh, and Cara, if you're reading this and are free this Thursday, PM me.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @01:54PM (4 children)
No NSA, CCP or Mossad spyware in Russia chip... only 100% made-in-Russia FSB code.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @03:56PM (3 children)
Only true if the tool chain is homegrown as well.
Seems unlikely.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 18 2022, @04:50PM (2 children)
It's not that difficult to write a 4K BASIC.
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by drussell on Monday April 18 2022, @07:43PM (1 child)
Sure... Bill Gates managed to do it. ;-)
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday April 18 2022, @09:35PM
Yes. :-) Bill Gates wrote his own original BASIC.
<no-sarcasm>
In all seriousness. With today's development tools, writing a 4K basic, even in assembler with a modern macro assembler wouldn't be so tough as back in the day.
</no-sarcasm>
How often should I have my memory checked? I used to know but...
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday April 18 2022, @02:35PM (11 children)
I guess they don't have much choice. These new sanctions are probably going to go on for a quite a while. That said previous chip production and such things have not exactly been fantastic. But I guess if will have to do it. Still one would think the friends in Bejing would supply they, even if on the hushhush level. If North Korea can have them I'm sure Russia can have them to. I guess it's just not on the scale. While it might not be able to compete with TSMC for the new and cool stuff, I guess if they can do the basic stuff that fills the niche and is needed that will just be good enough.
This can't be new plans tho. They must have been in the works for some time. They probably just got a tad bit more urgent as of lately.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by FatPhil on Monday April 18 2022, @03:52PM (6 children)
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @03:54PM (5 children)
Keep in mind that there's a reason why they have a smaller GDP that South Korea.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @04:33PM (2 children)
> there's a reason why they have a smaller GDP that South Korea.
My guess is there are multiple reasons why, some must be related to corruption. A large fraction of Russian gov't money for economic development is siphoned off to various friends of Putin. Any thoughts on some of the other reasons why a country with so many resources is still relatively poor?
Btw, I've noted before that Russia also has a smaller GDP than New York State. A major difference is that NY State doesn't have nukes...(well, there might be some at a military base in NY State, but under Federal control).
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:34PM (1 child)
Corruption is the root cause, but it isn't just Putin and his cronies stealing everything not nailed down. That's happening at every level, and the people at the bottom are stealing the nails just to put food on the table. A fish rots from the head and Putin's Russia smells worse than surströmming. If the world stopped buying Russian oil and gas the whole house of cards would collapse within a year.
(Score: 2) by Lester on Wednesday April 20 2022, @10:16PM
But the whole world is not going to stop buying gas and oil because they need it. Not only gas and oil, Russia produces 50% of world palladium, needed for electronics. From USA is easy because it has plenty of resources, but North Europe needs desperately gas.
The question is who would give up? Russia without the income or the rest world without Russian resources? A tip, are western citizens ready for the struggles of shortage of basic items? Don't worry about Russian citizens, it is a dictatorship and they would have to bear anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:39PM
and soon to have a smaller GDP than North Korea.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:01AM
But it gets worse...
Close your eyes. Open them again. Notice that *absolutely nothing*'s changed. It's entirely possible that the GDP measured whilst your eyes were closed was immense: anything that went in a cycle contributed its value times the length of the cycle. That's how flawed it is. Of course, economists will tell you this is a feature, despite it not being able to distinguish between nothing happening and lots happening.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 5, Interesting) by toold on Monday April 18 2022, @04:40PM (1 child)
As a software grunt at a major semiconductor firm, I heard plenty of insider "rumors" which were pretty well informed.
I vaguely remember that when Golbal Industries expanded its Dresden facility to a process 300 mm wafers at around 65nm or 45nm node, they basically ripped out all the 200nm machinery and sold it as a lot. The buyer was supposedly the Russian militarly, which was considered OK around 2010 or so since it was obsolete. That would have been around 90nm to 130nm node.
Wouldn't it be worth a chuckle if it turned out all that gear had been sitting around waiting for someone to build a fab building to put it in?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday April 18 2022, @07:40PM
They bought it for something. Still 10 years to just sit in a warehouse is a long time. But who knows. Perhaps it's was one of those things that they knew might be useful eventually or one day. That or this little war adventure has had some serious long term planning. Still if you don't want or need to build like the current state of the art it's probably still ok tho isn't it?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Monday April 18 2022, @05:46PM (1 child)
It wouldn't take the current sanctions for them to want to do this, see the U.S.'s own recent efforts to get domestic fabs.
Maybe they end up making their own slow 8-cores [soylentnews.org]... in 2031. Assuming everything works out on time.
There is a way they could really put these moldy old nodes to work. Pour resources into copying the 3DSoC concept [skywatertechnology.com]:
I'm not saying they will get it done, after all, where are the DARPA/SkyWater 3DSoCs at, but that is the kind of miracle that would allow 90/28nm to compete with modern nodes. Not that 90nm and 28nm [informa.com] are not useful to this day for various applications, particularly RF/analog.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by deimtee on Tuesday April 19 2022, @03:40AM
Or they could just block javascript.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @04:03PM (6 children)
Reminder: This "much" reflects one out of eight billion inhabitants, in other words, the US, its vassals in Europe, its two in Asia (Japan and South Korea), and Canada. Nobody else, not even Mexico, is willing to hurt its own economy for that hive of scum and villainy that is the Ukraine, on America's command.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by tizan on Monday April 18 2022, @04:17PM (5 children)
Dear Russian bot,
what "villainy" has Ukraine done to you ?
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @04:47PM (1 child)
Probably something they read on a KGB/QAnon propaganda website about a missing laptop.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @05:54PM
You think too highly of Russian propaganda bots; reading is not a thing they do unless forced to. Their job is to post what their script tells them, for 15 roubles a post; any sort of thinking about things they are posting, would be degrading the productivity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:50PM
They sunk his battleship.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @04:15AM (1 child)
Who says vassals? Maybe it sounds better in Russian. Do they still have feudal lords?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @12:54PM
You sank my vassals?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @04:17PM (5 children)
This is Putin's ideology trying to reconcile itself with reality. In Putin's worldview, Russia is a superpower. And superpowers shouldn't be dependent on 'enemy' countries for important things. In recent days he has publicly complained how Russia is too economically dependent the west. Unfortunately for him, his economy is just 2% of the world's GDP. So trying to source everything locally is futile. The Russian market is just not big enough to sustain viable home-grown versions of all the latest technologies. He will blow a bunch of rubles on creating a semiconductor industry that is at least 20 years behind when its products even work. Eventually, this will all blow over and that Russian semiconductor industry will get shut down without having ever produced anything of value.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:10PM
India has tried that also and they are a bigger economy than Russia and they still have failed. Putin has no clue. You can't just jump start an industry from thin air and suddenly be the leader.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by istartedi on Monday April 18 2022, @07:50PM (1 child)
At least for the time being, it seems like not only semiconductor fab but the assembly of components requires scale. I saw a story about some city in China (Shenzhen?) where they assemble so many products that it has built a unique market for spare parts. You can literally walk through the local bazaars and acquire all the components to clone an iPhone or Android device that will be very current. It will function just as well, being its namesake product in everything but name, at a fraction of the cost. Those markets were said to be unique. State of the art fabrication is not unique, but it definitely doesn't seem to make sense unless you have some big markets to scale in to, and Russia isn't going to have them.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @01:54AM
In previous generations, the same sort of neighborhood electronic surplus markets existed in NY City and then later in Tokyo (forgot the name of that market) and surplus outlets all around Silicon Valley.
With DEC and Wang in the minicomputer era and plenty of defense contractors, there was a good surplus electronic parts market in the Boston area, Eli Heffron's in Somerville was one place I visited many times. Here's some hams discussing east coast surplus stores of the past, https://www.antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=111228 [antiqueradios.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @08:05PM (1 child)
Don't forget since we are talking about Russia, some keptocrat is going to skim half the money right off the top too. So no matter how much money Putin pours in, the project is always underfunded.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @09:17PM
I have seen the destroyer of both countries and corporations.
Their names are Greed and Corruption.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @05:45PM (1 child)
The words "Russia plans", in 99.99% of instances, translate into "Putin's friends pocketed $$$$" and nothing else beyond that. Do you believe that sanctions could somehow magically instill honesty and business acumen in dumb thieving Russian "elite", or what?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:39PM
90% of Russia's plans are split between power point/video presentations, and empty bragging on Twitter. Only the remaining 10% have a budget to steal.
(Score: 2, Troll) by Username on Monday April 18 2022, @05:50PM (2 children)
How exactly are foreign agents going to hack and exploit PLCs that aren't Siemens? Process size doesnt matter when all you need to do is automate a uranium centrifuge
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Monday April 18 2022, @06:35PM (1 child)
Because the Russians found the secret sauce needed to create hacker-proof software, right?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Monday April 18 2022, @09:08PM
I am convinced a computer can be made to be hacker proof.
Much like a hand calculator is hacker proof.
Problem is that it will also be impossible to use it for rights enforcement, surveillance, remote upgrading, serving ads, and other computational nuisances.
Now, programs that do that may be installed, but the computer itself would have it's ethics cast in concrete, err...silicon ROM.
We used to have machines like that. Commodore64 was one of many of this architecture. It did what it did. Nothing more, nothing less.
I see no reason, other than the corporate and marketing greed to own their customer, that this paradigm could be scaled via object oriented programming techniques to make a far more powerful and useful machine. Vetted ROM based DLL using private RAM.
Until someone uses an EPROM programmer on it.
What the programmer does though is up to him. If he wants to shit in his sandbox, he will do it anyway. But the machine can be reset, leaving no trace of what it's been through.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 18 2022, @06:55PM
The semiconductor industry is about the purest example of economy of scale the world has ever seen. We're fast approaching the point where the entire world's economy together won't be big enough to support the next generation of fabs, and we'll be fully into the second phase of Moore's law. Even without the corruption Russia couldn't support a fab from twenty years ago, let alone anything remotely current.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @12:03AM (1 child)
fab size for smart weapons production?
Is 200nm scale, good enough?
asking for a comrade.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:01AM
What chip generation was in use during the first Persian Gulf War? Seems to me that those video-guided precision bombs were about as accurate as you need. I still remember seeing video from one of them on CNN c.1990.
Judging from recent photos of bombs in all sorts of unlikely places in Ukraine, the Russians don't even have that level of accuracy yet(?)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @04:16AM
next up super yacht, swiss watches and super mansions all made in beautiful russia, eh?
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Mojibake Tengu on Tuesday April 19 2022, @08:37AM (5 children)
This article makes me mixed feelings. Laughing and crying at the same time. At you, not at Russians.
Such kind of drivel comes out from Tom's hardware (namely Shilov) too often. And it always comes seemingly sourced from some 6th-column background, technically inside Russia but in reality well-connected to some British Council agent or outlet (CNews.ru, this time).
Purely ideologic, with un-facts totally disconnected to what Rostec real abilities and doings are.
Yes, I still remember how Tom's Hardware were driving heavy propaganda in previous decades, focused against GNU, FOSS and Linux as well as against AMD, as pro-Microsoft and pro-Intel propaganda outlet.
Because of this, I keep myself unshakably biased against Tom's, forever. Not sorry about that.
Just a factual reminder: Elbrus 8S at 28nm is in serial production since 2016, 8SV since 2020. That's the true reason why the Russians could not start the war against petro$ hegemony sooner. If something needed a boost, it was production scale, not technology itself.
90nm is about FPGAs these days, not about CPUs.
You just keep confusing yourself, guys. Please, continue doing so.
The edge of 太玄 cannot be defined, for it is beyond every aspect of design
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @09:43AM
TSMC made the Elbrus 8S and 8SV, not Russia.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:15PM (3 children)
if you sell energy you are firmly in aphrodites camp. doesn't matter if your 'murikan, russian, arab, whatever.
"selling" implies ownership.
so i don't agree russia is waging anything else then a war for access to the aphrodisiac market ... same like the rest.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:39PM (1 child)
it also those countries that need to keep the reigns firmly on her. putting a nice dress on is just the icying on the cake (to hid those extra appendages).
it's only "stable clubbermnet" and "rule of law" (with all the arbitrary shit it entails) that keeps her from turning back into shiva ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @02:42PM
we know what happens if you mess with "queen bitch" in antarctic ...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 20 2022, @12:12AM
Wow, you are dumber and edgier than Mojibaka. Quite the feat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @10:11AM
As far as I recall, Russia had their CPU designs. There was MCST Elbrus which was quite usable for its time (Pentium III and 4 era), there was Baikal, and there was MK architecture which never left prototype stage because it was totally incompatible with modern compilers - you could not program it, you had to program the device which makes your program run best. Yes, the CPU had a large array of programmable cells.
The biggest problems was always in manufacturing. The plants were there, but their technology was obsolete and pushed to the limits. They made hybrid circuits until late 1990s. In 1980s, 96% of photoelectric matrices they made were faulty - and they still manufactured and sold it. CPU prototyping was made using enormous amount of PGA chips connected together and many times they were "working models" which could not achieve their predicted frequency because of this technology. Even if they could make a new CPU architecture, there will be nobody to program it.
However, let's look how computer science looks now. You don't teach people how the computer works. How the compiler works. How the main is transcribed to the execution. Hot the operating system works. For most modern programmers, old good Galvin-Silberschatz is too difficult! So you teach them frameworks. This is cheaper in short term, but in the long term it makes programmers think that computers work on magic, that everyone has 256GB of RAM and one more abstraction layer is OK because magic in GPU may take it.
I know this, as one time I tried to explain to Students, 4th year of Applied Computer Science, how GCC works. There was a single person in 80-people group who known what tokenization is. Three people known assembly.
So if Russia will start to manufacture their chips, they will probably restore their computer science teaching - you start with the medium which computers process, so with maths. Then, computer architecture, maybe some electronics goes along. Then you go to compilers, operating systems and programming languages.
I found that knowing how the compiler/interpreter operates is really helpful. This is a knowledge which will make programming so easy! Even if something is told to be impossible, you can see how compiler does it, find the way and implement it. I did it a few times in C++ and, to some extent, in JavaScript, when I wanted Firefox to launch ImageMagick in my computer right after downloading the image from my website. Officially, no - you cannot. Unofficially, stuff the data here and there and here it is. This is a really handy thing, but nobody wants to learn it.
So Russia will have a few years going with their old hardware when they will go back to teaching computer science instead of magic, but later, who knows?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 19 2022, @11:11AM
And watch as everyone pines after getting one.