Among the first retaliatory measures for initiating the invasion of Ukraine was the halting of shipments of materials to Russia of all kinds. Among which are the various microprocessors and other hardware components, since we remember that these also have military purposes. Will stopping shipments to Russia negatively affect IT hardware and its market? And if so, to what extent?
The reaction of most of the world to the war in Ukraine has been clear and direct: restrictions on exports to Russia. In the case of the United States, where most of the major players in the hardware industry are from, this means that Intel and AMD have suspended the sale of chips in Russia. Thus, the PC market is in principle likely to disappear completely when the hardware for sale is finished, but it is not.
Has the sale of equipment to Russia been stopped in retaliation?
At the moment, it is not entirely clear whether the sale of hardware will stop, as the export restrictions mainly concern chips for military purposes or applications. Although this should also cover all equipment that can also be used in the civilian field, but can be used for the military. That is why it is assumed that the cessation of the export of equipment to Russia will be complete. On the other hand, Russia, despite having its own industry with companies like Baikal, MCST, Yadroand STC module, etc It apparently lacks manufacturing capacity in its catchment area and TSMC has also decided to cut its supply.
However, it is expected that Russia has taken this eventuality into account and has been able to accumulate stocks of different chips alongside the development, unknown to the public, of manufacturing plants using old nodes in order to have its own processor supply. Keep in mind that for some applications it is not necessary to have the most advanced architecture or the most modern node. In any case, despite the fact that the sale of semiconductors to Russia has been completely stopped, this will not affect the hardware market. Since the Russian government’s expenditure on computer hardware is nothing more than a 0.1% of the globel, and if we talk about the global hardware market, they are hardly 50.3 billion out of a total of 4.47 trillion US dollars.
Russian miners are the most affected
There is no doubt that Russia is one of the countries where there are a large number of mining farms, which have been the ones that have suffered the most from the consequences of Russia’s widespread isolation. Which were already closed by the authorities of the two countries in conflict a few months ago with the argument that they operated with stolen electricity.
If we add to this that the economic boycott can result in a corralito situation in which Russian citizens seek a safe haven currency, even in the form of cryptocurrencies, which the Russian government cannot control, this translates into less material for them and in theory a greater thickness for the rest of the world. Especially gaming graphics cards which are rare. In any case, the Russian market is much less important than others in the world in terms of hardware if we talk about purchasing power, which means that the consequences will not be perceived, in principle, by companies like Intel, AMD or NVIDIA.
