First competitive CPU from Russia? Introducing the "Baikal-S"

[GreatGandalf]

20th December by AleksandarK:

Russian government institutions have been funding the development of Russians first competitive CPU.

Russia managed to boot up a 48 Arm-Based Core RISC-V Coprocessor called the Baikal-S. 

48 cores at 2.0 Ghz, with a maximum boost of 2.5 GHz clock speed
Achieved at the TDP of 120 Watts
Tech Powerup news link

Original source: Tweeted by Dmitrii Kuznetsov

 

Summary

 Russian government institutions have been funding the development of Russians first competitive CPU.

 

Quotes

Quote

In 2022, the company plans to produce 10,000 BE-S1000 SoCs and 30,000 of them in 2023. While this may not seem like a lot, we don't know what capacity is Baikal Electronics working with. So for more details, we have to wait.

 

My thoughts:

I think this develoment is a interesting point for processors coming from Baikal Electronics and their footprint in processor manufacturing and retail.

 

Sources

https://www.techpowerup.com/290061/russian-baikal-s-processor-with-48-arm-based-cores-boots-up-uses-risc-v-coprocessor-for-safe-boot-and-management
https://twitter.com/torgeek/status/1472571292360626186

[mariushm]

The company isn't "producing" much. 

 

The chips are made by TSMC on the 28 nm process node, which by now is very old, they had it since 2011-ish ... as an idea it was used 9-10 years ago by AMD and others to make video cards like AMD 7770 Ghz edition  : https://www.techpowerup.com/gpu-specs/radeon-hd-7770-ghz-edition.c308

 

So they licensed the risc-v core ready made by others and used it as the "security / boot / management" core  ... that's the big news.  The rest is 48 ARM cores, nothing special, the design of the A75 cores used is from 2017 (so probably also cheaper to license them by now from ARM).

 

Kudos to the engineers for gluing everything together in a package and actually making something, but that's about all that's worth saying about it.

[whm1974]

I was just thinking something new for once... Nope same old same old... The Company should did something with the RISC-V ISA. Call it the Baikal-RV for now.

[Sauron]

Why exactly do we expect this to be "competitive"? Just having many cores and a high TDP doesn't mean much.

[williamcll]

Russians? TSMC? expect US sanctions within months using some thinly veiled excuse about human right violations that were funded by government taxed think tanks.

[whispous]

1 hour ago, GreatGandalf said:

Arm-Based Core RISC-V Coprocessor

what

[Jurrunio]

Competitive choice for the government/military maybe, not for us consumers.

[SolarNova]

I initial read it as "Bankai" and thought ..."someone likes Bleach"

[YoungBlade]

4 hours ago, mariushm said:

The company isn't "producing" much. 

 

The chips are made by TSMC on the 28 nm process node

So what you're saying is...

 

[Lightwreather]

5 hours ago, GreatGandalf said:

Arm-Based Core RISC-V Coprocessor

This literally connot make sense. ARM is an implementation of RISC philosophy of computing, and so is RISC-V. But tehy can't be both at the same time.

[SolarNova]

52 minutes ago, YoungBlade said:

So what you're saying is...

 

I love that scene, used to make me crack up laughing every time. Alas seen it so many times now i no longer laugh ...still great though.

[porina]

10 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

This literally connot make sense. ARM is an implementation of RISC philosophy of computing, and so is RISC-V. But tehy can't be both at the same time.

On clicking the link, it looks like the hard work is done by the Arm cores, with RISC-V separately doing management stuff.

[whm1974]

40 minutes ago, J-from-Nucleon said:

This literally connot make sense. ARM is an implementation of RISC philosophy of computing, and so is RISC-V. But tehy can't be both at the same time.

Multi Core SoCs can be a mix of different ISAs. In this case the Co-Processors are RISC-V based. While the Main Cores themselves uses ARM.

[wseaton]

Chip design is becoming a commodity with even Amazon getting into the fray. No need to bother with inefficient and power hungry CISC based x86 processors backwards compatible with your DOS based Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets from 1987. If you are a big guy just design your own chips for your own purpose. This is really no news.

 

What matters is where the FABs are, because they control EVERYTHING. "He who control's the FABs controls the universe".   Yup. Do you really think China is saber rattling with Taiwan for just nationalism sake? China is desperate for FAB capability. 

 

Having both CISC and RISC chips on the same architecture with an OS capable of steering threads towards either would be a wet dream. 

[BuckGup]

I would imagine these are for mining given this company making ASICs for the past couple years

[CTR640]

Does it need vodka gel as thermal paste?

[whm1974]

18 hours ago, wseaton said:

Chip design is becoming a commodity with even Amazon getting into the fray. No need to bother with inefficient and power hungry CISC based x86 processors backwards compatible with your DOS based Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheets from 1987. If you are a big guy just design your own chips for your own purpose. This is really no news.

 

What matters is where the FABs are, because they control EVERYTHING. "He who control's the FABs controls the universe".   Yup. Do you really think China is saber rattling with Taiwan for just nationalism sake? China is desperate for FAB capability. 

 

Having both CISC and RISC chips on the same architecture with an OS capable of steering threads towards either would be a wet dream. 

DOS hasn't been a thing since XP and Win7 have been widely adopted. Lotus 1-2-3 been replaced...

 

Some correction here: It matter more on where and who controls the Silicon Supplies and Wafer Manufacturing. Replace with Carbon Nanotubes? Oh please...

 

IBM had a Hybrid PPC/x86 CPU but Microsoft refused to support it. Nevermind that Windows NT 3.51 already was native on many ISAs.

[MultiGamerClub]

On 12/21/2021 at 2:07 PM, GreatGandalf said:

48 cores

Their first cpu and they try to hit this high? Jesus..

[CTR640]

15 minutes ago, MultiGamerClub said:

Their first cpu and they try to hit this high? Jesus..

Why are you surprised? The Russians have lynx cats and polar bears as pets and vodka is their life elixir. And also don't forget they have Matrjoshka.

 

And 120W?! Oh damn! Intel can ask them for some help.