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Russia To Build RISC-V Processors for Laptops: 8-core, 2 GHz, 12nm, 2025
Russian outlet Vedomosti.ru today is reporting that the conglomerate Rostec, a Russian state-backed corporation specializing in investment in technology, has penned a deal with server company Yadro and silicon design company Sintakor to develop RISC-V processors for computers, laptops, and servers. Initial reports are suggesting that Sintakor will develop a powerful enough RISC-V design to power government and education systems by 2025.
The cost of the project is reported to be around 30 billion rubles ($400m), with that the organizers of the project plan to sell 60,000 systems based around new processors containing RISC-V cores as the main processing cores. The reports state that the goal is to build an 8-core processor, running at 2 GHz, using a 12-nanometer process, which presumably means GlobalFoundries but at this point it is unclear. Out of the project funding, two-thirds will be provided by 'anchor customers' (such as Rostec and subsidiaries), while the final third will come from the federal budget. The systems these processors will go into will operate initially at Russia's Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Ministry of Health.
Previously: Russian Homegrown Elbrus-4C CPU Released
Linux-Based, MIPS-Powered Russian All-in-One PC Launched
Programming Guide for Russia's "28nm" Elbrus-8CB CPU Published
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 15 2021, @11:57AM (8 children)
If this is for desktops or servers, isn't having an AXI4 external bus a strange choice, compared to also offering PCIe?
(Score: 2) by looorg on Thursday July 15 2021, @01:50PM (1 child)
From the article it seems that the core customer is supposed to be various government agencies and institutions so it might not matter which they chose. It's not supposed to be for the consumer market as far as I can tell.
Also AXI4 is, as far as I know, free and available without much regulations and such. Is using PCIe free (money and rules wise)? Also the main stakeholders in PCIe are all the big tech corps and most of them are not necessarily the first choice for Russian tech and companies. If you are building a RISC-V processor you might be in tight with ARM and if you are then you might as well use AXI4 to since it's also from ARM? That it's free might just be a bonus in that regard.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 15 2021, @04:36PM
Core customer is REvil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 16 2021, @02:57AM
It is for government money. The story of the previous "russian CPU" finished in a large criminal case, guess it is time for a new iteration.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baikal_CPU [wikipedia.org]
http://www.msk-post.com/politics/money_of_mia_laundered_by_baikal32487/ [msk-post.com]
(Score: 2) by TheRaven on Friday July 16 2021, @11:21AM
sudo mod me up
(Score: 2) by driverless on Friday July 16 2021, @01:05PM (3 children)
In fact the whole thing seems a bit odd, if you're going to spend a fortune to roll your own, meaning make your computer industry independent of US suppliers, you want to do an x86. That's the thing the US can use to hit Russia since both of the world's x86 suppliers are US-based. You can get RISC-V and ARM from anywhere, but if the US decides you can't have x86's you're screwed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 17 2021, @12:42AM (2 children)
Why? They can do x86 in software if they /really/ need to. RISC seems to have all the momentum right now.
(Score: 2) by driverless on Saturday July 17 2021, @01:48AM (1 child)
Runs Windows does it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 17 2021, @02:25AM
Is the Russian government also bribed into stupidity by Microsoft?