Russia plans to manufacture chips locally on a 28 nm node by 2030

[Tudor Cibean]

What just happened? In the wake of the recent sanctions imposed on Russia, its government is developing a rather ambitious plan to become more independent from western technology. It involves a massive investment in domestic chip development and manufacturing and training personnel in this field.

Following the invasion of Ukraine, Russia got hit with an unprecedented amount of international sanctions. While this has undoubtedly crippled the Russian economy, it also cut off their access to an essential resource in this day and age, semiconductors.

Companies like Intel, AMD, and IBM have stopped selling their products in Russia, leaving the country unable to source western chips. While they could design the silicon themselves, manufacturing them wouldn't be possible as foundries like TSMC and GlobalFoundries also halted sales to Russia and third parties that supplied to Russia.

The Russian government has devised a preliminary plan to tackle the issue. It involves investing around 3.19 trillion rubles ($38.3 billion) in developing the local microelectronics industry. This money will go to four main areas: development of local semiconductor fabrication technologies, domestic chip development, marketing of the said chips, and training the local talent.

Approximately 420 billion rubles ($5 billion) will get invested in developing newer fabrication nodes and ramping up production. Russia aims to ramp up the local chip production using a 90 nm node by the end of the year. By 2030, they intend to manufacture chips using a 28nm process technology, something TSMC did in 2011.

Russia also plans to launch a program this year that will focus on reverse engineering western electronics and eventually manufacturing them within Russian borders or in China. The finalized plan will be sent for official approval by the prime minister on April 22.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/94233-russia-plans-manufacture-chips-locally-28-nm-node.html

 

[Revolution 11]

Yeah ok buddy, who is going to maintain those lithography machines used for 28nm? China? Just cut the inefficient middleman out and import all your chips from Bejing then and save yourself 10 years of wasted effort.

 

[nodfor]

Most applications don't really need something more than nehalem level IPC (nehalem was 45nm)

The heaviness of the sanctions imposed, makes very likely that reverse engineering and piracy will be allowed on a mass scale, making it possible for them to bridge the gap faster and at the same time cut costs for local businesses, due to reduced expenditure for software licenses.

 

[Squid Surprise]

This is all smoke and mirrors… sanctions will be long gone by 2030… they’ll be back to buying western chips…

 

[Rock Dirty]

Most applications don't really need something more than nehalem level IPC (nehalem was 45nm)

The heaviness of the sanctions imposed, makes very likely that reverse engineering and piracy will be allowed on a mass scale, making it possible for them to bridge the gap faster and at the same time cut costs for local businesses, due to reduced expenditure for software licenses.

And where are they going to get the machines TO MAKE THE CHIPS THEY HAVE PIRATED? Do you have ANY IDEA how involved and intricate making processors is?

Where are they going to get the wafers to make the chips on top of that?

 

[winjer]

LOL, 28nm in 2030. That's just a 2 decade lag.

 

[VaRmeNsI]

Most Russians are still playing CS so 28nm should be enough.

China is domestically able to match at least Nvidia 2000 series cards and catching up fast.

 

[Revolution 11]

This is all smoke and mirrors… sanctions will be long gone by 2030… they’ll be back to buying western chips…

Crimea was taken in 2014, those sanctions were still going strong in 2021. That's 7 years.

In 2022, Ukraine is attacked and much more massive sanctions are imposed. That would imply that the sanctioneers are more serious, more angry, etc.

What makes you think that these new sanctions will last less than the Crimea sanctions which themselves were in effect for 7 years (and still in effect actually)????

2030 is only 8 years away.

 

[Nobina]

LOL, 28nm in 2030. That's just a 2 decade lag.

That doesn't matter.

 

[trparky]

Way to go there Putin, way to go at setting your country and its economy back twenty years. Needless to say, this little war of his is going to hurt his country for decades to come.

 

[Vulcanproject]

This is Venezuela levels of central planning. Yeah, take a look at how that works out....

 

[Achaios]

Whoever thinks that 28nm chips are bad, reminder that Haswell is 22nm and it's still perfect for gaming and productivity in 2022.

As for the 90nm chips they make now, reminder that Pentium 4 Northwood was 130nm and a typical chip from that era, 1 Core 2 Threads with HT, the Pentium 4 3.06 Northwood, could easily run Windows XP and Windows 7 AT STOCK as well as support basic gaming such as World of Warcraft in resolutions such as 1366X768 and meet all your productivity needs.

I had a laptop with that CPU back in 2005 and a 150nm Nvidia Geforce4 460 Go GPU. It had 64MB of DDR RAM and ran on a AGP 4X interface.

 

[seeprime]

Maybe Putin can also spearhead designing a supercomputer out of used Commodore 64's.

 

[scavengerspc]

Maybe Putin can also spearhead designing a supercomputer out of used Commodore 64's.

I doubt Russia is that far advanced.

 

[psycros]

"Russia also plans to launch a program this year that will focus on reverse engineering western electronics and eventually manufacturing them within Russian borders or in China."

As if they weren't already doing that, although nowhere near as successfully as China.

 

[Revolution 11]

Whoever thinks that 28nm chips are bad, reminder that Haswell is 22nm and it's still perfect for gaming and productivity in 2022.

As for the 90nm chips they make now, reminder that Pentium 4 Northwood was 130nm and a typical chip from that era, 1 Core 2 Threads with HT, the Pentium 4 3.06 Northwood, could easily run Windows XP and Windows 7 AT STOCK as well as support basic gaming such as World of Warcraft in resolutions such as 1366X768 and meet all your productivity needs.

I had a laptop with that CPU back in 2005 and a 150nm Nvidia Geforce4 460 Go GPU. It had 64MB of DDR RAM and ran on a AGP 4X interface.

Pretty confident of you to assume that Russian chip designers are on the level of Intel or Nvidia. Also to assume that a Russian 28nm node is the same as other 28nm nodes.

And again, you need lithographic equipment to make 28nm wafers. So who is going to risk sanctions and sell that equipment to Russia? Russia can't make 28nm chips today, they definitely can't make their own fab equipment.

China probably can make this stuff and they don't mind selling it, so why not just buy Chinese chips and skip the hard work?

All of this is a geopolitical trap of Putin's own making. A real strategic genius we have here.

 

[Underdog]

I am sceptical of the whole idea of sanctions. Think of the arms manufacturers. They all publicly agree not to sell their wares to the "bad guys" so they quietly sell to the arms dealers off the record. The arms dealers sell to the highest bidder, good or bad. Money talks. As long as Russia is pulling in a billion dollars a day selling its oil and gas to Europe it can afford all the chips it wants, direct from China. Such a shame the west outsourced its chip manufacturing to a country that is happy to copy pretty much anything it gets its hands on. Saves Putin the trouble of reverse engineering stuff. The only downside I can see is the Russian tubes for the now fashionable tube hi fi amps are getting crazy expensive.

 

[Squid Surprise]

Crimea was taken in 2014, those sanctions were still going strong in 2021. That's 7 years.

In 2022, Ukraine is attacked and much more massive sanctions are imposed. That would imply that the sanctioneers are more serious, more angry, etc.

What makes you think that these new sanctions will last less than the Crimea sanctions which themselves were in effect for 7 years (and still in effect actually)????

2030 is only 8 years away.

And those sanctions from 2014 were SO effective… Russia might INTEND to start manufacturing stuff by 2030 - but it’s not going to happen… lots can (and will) happen between now and 2030 - but it won’t be Russia becoming economically independent…

 

[Axle Grease]

And those sanctions from 2014 were SO effective… Russia might INTEND to start manufacturing stuff by 2030 - but it’s not going to happen… lots can (and will) happen between now and 2030 - but it won’t be Russia becoming economically independent…

The withdrawal of financial services has caused immediate strife and the ongoing brain-drain of young people leaving Russia will cause medium to long term damage. The only sanction that will hit Russia hard and fast is for Germany to stop buying fossil fuels from it which Germany is unwilling to do.

 

[Axle Grease]

The first image that popped into my head when I read this article is Russian gamers in 2030 running Russian made GTX 980s.

 

[Knot Schure]

Yeah ok buddy, who is going to maintain those lithography machines used for 28nm? China? Just cut the inefficient middleman out and import all your chips from Bejing then and save yourself 10 years of wasted effort.

Ssssssh. Let them try…

 

[Knot Schure]

Most applications don't really need something more than nehalem level IPC (nehalem was 45nm)

The heaviness of the sanctions imposed, makes very likely that reverse engineering and piracy will be allowed on a mass scale, making it possible for them to bridge the gap faster and at the same time cut costs for local businesses, due to reduced expenditure for software licenses.

90nm is garbage today. But I guess that is the lithography tools available on the 2nd hand market right now? I used to see such things for sale, usually bankrupt smaller companies having just gone under shedding their assets, but I haven’t been in receipt of those kinds of publications for a couple of years now to say for sure.

AS for the theft of intellectual property - that is all a commie state knows how to do. The ‘Three R’s’ as its referred to in China;
Rob - the IP, figure it out.
Replicate - the product, quality be dammed.
Replace - the market, with your cheap offerings.

Even in the Cold War (which I say never ended), the Ruskies had a number of plants in US companies, stealing whatever IP they could lay their hands on. At one point we found out, and started sending disinformation on products, which some postulate upset their space program no-end. I can only dream it did.

Upset created everywhere, but what do they care? Zero f**** given.

We really should work harder to buy from our own companies, when we can.

 

[hahahanoobs]

Replace Intel and AMD with 28nm in 2030?

Um...

 

[rmcrys]

Way to go there Putin, way to go at setting your country and its economy back twenty years. Needless to say, this little war of his is going to hurt his country for decades to come.

If you watch international news, you'll see that many Ukrainians are being injured or insulted by Russians on many western countries, which basically shows that a big part of the Russians (even those expats on western countries without blocked news) agrees with Putin. So, they are just fine being blocked as long as they can invade other countries

 

[loki1944]

Way to go there Putin, way to go at setting your country and its economy back twenty years. Needless to say, this little war of his is going to hurt his country for decades to come.

Well if he gets Ukranian resources and secures area of interest; Putin and Russia may yet come out ahead. As to self sufficiency; I wish we would do that rather than suckling on CCP.