The cost of the project would be around 30 billion rubles, which equates to around 370 million dollars, and the project organizers plan to sell 60,000 systems based on their new processor with RISC-V cores as the main core of the lawsuits.
Russia’s first processor will be a 12-nanometer RISC-V
Reports say the goal is to build an 8-core processor that runs at a minimum of 2 GHz using a 12-nanometer process, which presumably means GlobalFoundries will be the one to build it, although that is obviously not the whole point. quite clear. Of the project funds, two-thirds will be provided by “flagship customers” (such as Rostec and its subsidiaries), while the last third will come from the Russian federal budget. The systems these processors enter will initially work at the Russian Ministry of Education and Science, as well as the Ministry of Health.
Syntacore is already developing its own kernel with the RISC-V architecture, rather than licensing its design. There have been doubts as to whether a current RISC-V design is suitable enough for administrative services, and yet with recent news that Canonical is enabling Ubuntu / Linux on some of the SiFive-V RISCs, there is a good chance that by 2025, which is when that Russian processor is ready, there will be a sufficient number of software options to choose from if the processor meets the required specifications.
That said, it’s not uncommon for non-standard processors from countries like Russia or China to use older custom Linux forks to meet the needs of businesses that will be using the hardware. Syntacore’s documentation indicates that its more powerful 64-bit kernel is already compatible with Linux.
This news shows an interesting development given that Russia already has several local processor prospects underway, such as the Elbrus 2000 family of processors running a custom VLIW instruction set with binary translation for Intel x86 and x86-64; these processors already offer 8-core and multi-socket systems under Linux.
Elbrus development is still ongoing with Rostec in the equation, and the project appears to be focused on high-powered implementations using both desktop and server computers. In contrast, the new RISC-V development appears to target low power implementations for use in desktops and laptops. Russia also has Baikal processors that use the ISA MIPS32, built by a Russian supercomputer company.
It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds: 370 million dollars should be enough to develop a processor and instruct the design of the system at this level, which considers the question of whether the project will be carried out or will remain in a simple development, research.
