Russia Says It's Assembled a Lithography Machine, Will Make 350nm Chips

erek

erek

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“The bigger issue for Russia is that it's likely wholly incapable of supporting a domestic chipmaking industry. It doesn't have a local labor force capable of operating a full-blown chip fab, nor does it have access to the raw materials needed. Russia has also been sanctioned for its invasion of Ukraine, preventing it from buying any advanced chipmaking technologies.

We'll have to wait and see if this fledgling effort is just a gateway to some larger ambitions for the Russian state, though we doubt it will amount to much. Tom's Hardware notes the country's representatives have previously revealed an aggressive roadmap that would see the country achieving 14nm chip production by 2030. However, that doesn't seem possible if they'll only be capable of 350nm chips in 2024.”

Source: https://www.extremetech.com/computi...ithography-machine-will-make-350nm-chips-soon
 
Ya thats... Ummm... Like why even do that? I mean I get not everything needs to be latest node, we make a LOT of useful chips for lots of products every day on older, cheaper, nodes. Your microwave has a PIC in it, they are not paying to have that fabbed on 3nm. But 350nm? That's so old as to just be useless. People are literally throwing away much better stuff all the time.

Seems like this is more of a dick-measuring "Look we can fab chips too!" rather than anything useful.
 
Sycraft said:
Ya thats... Ummm... Like why even do that? I mean I get not everything needs to be latest node, we make a LOT of useful chips for lots of products every day on older, cheaper, nodes. Your microwave has a PIC in it, they are not paying to have that fabbed on 3nm. But 350nm? That's so old as to just be useless. People are literally throwing away much better stuff all the time.

Seems like this is more of a dick-measuring "Look we can fab chips too!" rather than anything useful.
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I'm guessing this is for their military first, their consumer market second.

Military hardware has always been behind the curve. Consider the fact that ICBMs could be launched and flown with relative accuracy with machines that predated ... like everything.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D-17B

Their ICBMS have guidance systems designed in 1962. A Pentium equivalent processor is likely enough to control the electronics in their military hardware. Doesn't require much processing power.
 
Sycraft said:
But 350nm? That's so old as to just be useless.
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It's worse than that--one article I read, not the one linked in the OP, said Russia's domestic fabs make chips in the 250-90nm range, meaning this litho machine won't even work the the fabs.
 
Is the 350nm process 30 years old sure, but is it good enough for a cheap automotive sector you bet! and would it likely be exactly what they need to service the vast majority of their aging military infrastructure? Probably...

Either way, good on them for making something they can use, the sanctions are hitting them pretty hard and they need to find some means of transitioning out of their current wartime economy as it is not sustainable long term.
 
1_rick said:
It's worse than that--one article I read, not the one linked in the OP, said Russia's domestic fabs make chips in the 250-90nm range, meaning this litho machine won't even work the the fabs.
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But they had to buy those fabs from somewhere else, either from ASML in the Netherlands, or Cannon in Japan, and with the current embargos they may not be able to get parts or servicing for that hardware.
Russia is looking for a long-term solution as their electronics manufacturing capabilities have been cut off due to restraints on Silicon imports, they have probably had to resort to using SIMC as China is one of the few countries openly working with them. I suspect they don't like the idea of China building components for their Military any more than the Pentagon would.
 
socK said:
Hopefully I can run Quake 2 at decent frame rates on my next Russian processor
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The requirement would be a shot of Vodka after each kill while running the game on the processor. After a few I'd doubt you'd really care about framerate. :D
 
I don't like the Russian government, but to be honest, with how mich huge tech companies are slowing down and struggling with sub-10 nanometre processes, it kind of makes sense to start from much more outdated, but well documented and achievable lithographic processes and play catch up.

Even if you progress at half the rate as TSMC or Intel, you'll catch up to be within 10 years off the current technology eventually.
 
Gotta start at the beginning, I guess. I expect their progress will surely go far faster than the cynics like to say, just as China's did. China wasn't supposed to be able to reach 7nm into the foreseeable future. But they've blown past it, are now doing 5m, and are preparing for 3nm without EUV. And the US' efforts to try to cut the legs out from under China by revoking its license to Qualcomm chips is only affirming and hastening China's push towards chip self-sufficiency. Russia has surely taken note, and will get help from China in making progress towards doing the same.

In the long run, I think having more countries developing their own CPUs will be great for technology innovation and security, and tech being decentralised will discourage access to it from being weaponized, like the US has done, and which drives prices up for everybody.

Huawei patent reveals 3nm-class process technology plans — China continues to move forward despite US sanctions

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1793457614816494011
This is absolutely incredible. If you're still under the illusion that the US has any hope of stopping China's progress in semiconductors, you have to watch this.

This is Philipp Wong, Chief Scientist at TSMC and legendary Professor of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. He's undoubtedly one of the, if not THE world's leading scientific figure in the field of semiconductors.

Here's what he says:

"Years ago we had technical conferences and we see papers from China. Ah forget it! Just... Quality is so bad it's not even competitive. That was probably in the 80s and the 90s. Now they're better than us. They're better than us!

If you look at papers, publications, data from key conferences in the chips business. [...] You basically flipped. Years ago the US had the majority of the papers. I remember there were roughly about 40 to 50% of the papers from the US. And China, maybe 20-30 years ago, they were nowhere to be found. Today, China and Asia, the papers, are more than 40%, almost close to 50%. And the US has steadily declined from 40-50% to 30 to 40%. And the rest of the world, principally Europe and Japan has basically fallen off a cliff.

So the research and development, the research capability in Asian countries, China, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and so on have really become the strongest region. In terms of producing good quality research. I'm not just talking about quantity, it's quality.

The only thing that I see... What the US is still little bit ahead is in coming up with the new ideas. What the Chinese always say: going from zero to 1. Namely starting from nowhere, nothing, and come up with this really new idea. And if I look at what I would call new idea that has not been discussed before, the US still is the principal place where these new ideas come from. But once these new ideas become known, then... I feel it in my everyday research with my students. Any new ideas that we come up, once they become known... that this is a good idea. The next week it will show up in China. It will show up in China, only that they do it better than you.

I can't, cannot compete anymore. They have better resources, they have more students. They have more, more funding from the government. I cannot compete anymore. I have to get out of that field!"
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From the Extreme Tech article about Russia's ambition: "Tom's Hardware notes the country's representatives have previously revealed an aggressive roadmap that would see the country achieving 14nm chip production by 2030. However, that doesn't seem possible if they'll only be capable of 350nm chips in 2024."

I'd like to know what mental calculation was performed to make that deduction. Because it sounds like typical sneering, and as though they're implying that because it took mainstream chips decades to reach the point they're at, that it'll also take anyone else decades to make the same progress, regardless of them starting in a year that already has the previous decades' information, progress, technology, and expertise available to work with. And that's just not a sensible assertion.
 
Well their military is doing something right, considering they are handily defeating NATO-supplied equipment in Ukraine. Lots of shiny western toys they have on display as trophies right now in Moscow. Maybe the French should go in and show them who is boss? Just sayin'. 🤷‍♂️
 
LOL... Being the birthplace of the work political system in the history of man is finally coming home to roost. What a joke 350nm lol
 
Maybe not that big, but we can imagine that (above 100nm) are still being used, during the 2021-2022 car chips supply, lack of 90nm and above production was a big deal, in military tanks, plane, industrial, petrol Russian tech...

Going from 300nm to 90nm to 40nm could be quite fast, we can imagine it is going to the 20-14 and below that get really challenging once you got good at the old node.

Think about all the things that do not need, not even close a core 2 duo amount of compute and can affort to use power-space... it is quite common.
 
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NukeDukem said:
Well their military is doing something right, considering they are handily defeating NATO-supplied equipment in Ukraine. Lots of shiny western toys they have on display as trophies right now in Moscow. Maybe the French should go in and show them who is boss? Just sayin'. 🤷‍♂️
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If they were resolutely secure in the belief that things are going well for their invasion and genocide, there'd be no need for a propaganda stunt to try to manage perception. Overcompensation is telling.

Same for the "sanctions aren't working" trope. If they weren't having an impact, why the sudden desperation to figure out how to build chip fabs.
 
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DPI said:
If they were resolutely secure in the belief that things are going well for their invasion and genocide, I doubt they'd be sweating a propaganda stunt to try to change perception.

Same as the "sanctions aren't working" trope. If they weren't having an impact, there probably wouldn't be this sudden desperation to figure out how to build chip fabs.
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The sanctions have completely backfired. Germany is being de-industrialized as we speak due to the loss of the cheap energy it required, the UK economy is contracting, and the Russian economy is growing. They have natural resources everyone in the world will buy regardless of sanctions, and the US has printed fiat currency. Who has the better long-game strategy? Who has the astronomical debt? And yes, they are winning their war of attrition on the battlefield in Ukraine as well.

It's not looking good for the west no matter how much you want to lie to yourself.
 
Sycraft said:
Ya thats... Ummm... Like why even do that? I mean I get not everything needs to be latest node, we make a LOT of useful chips for lots of products every day on older, cheaper, nodes. Your microwave has a PIC in it, they are not paying to have that fabbed on 3nm. But 350nm? That's so old as to just be useless. People are literally throwing away much better stuff all the time.

Seems like this is more of a dick-measuring "Look we can fab chips too!" rather than anything useful.
Click to expand...

They’re doing it because they have to. They don’t want to walk away from Putin’s “restoration of the Soviet Union” ambitions, and the price for that is Western sanctions. They know they can be cut-off and need to begin to figure out how to do this themselves, just like they did during the Soviet Union.
 
HockeyJon said:
They’re doing it because they have to. They don’t want to walk away from Putin’s “restoration of the Soviet Union” ambitions, and the price for that is Western sanctions. They know they can be cut-off and need to begin to figure out how to do this themselves, just like they did during the Soviet Union.
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Good luck to them with that. :p They were at least a decade behind the rest of the world, probably more, when it they finally broke up.
 
Most country of the world decided to ramp up chips production since 2021 too, it is not particularl just to Russia:
https://www.canadassemiconductorcou...-launches-automotive-microchips-working-group
https://www.venturelab.ca/news/grow...nductor-ecosystem-must-be-a-national-priority
Semiconductors are still in the spotlight
The importance of semiconductors became clear during the COVID-19 pandemic, when snarled global supply chains exposed weaknesses in the world’s overreliance on one part of the world for manufacturing of such critical components.

European Commission's EU Chips Act includes up to $43 billion in targeted support for Europe's semiconductor sector.

USA, Germany/europe in general, Canada, Australia, everyone during the shortage had some, this is strategic, who knows about Taiwan and supply chain, we must get going locally type of overreaction.

HockeyJon said:
. They don’t want to walk away from Putin’s “restoration of the Soviet Union” ambitions,
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Putin seem to be anti-soviet and much more into restoring the Russia empire. Restoring a feminist, no-Russia as a country anymore, anti-racist, anti-religion, ultra egalitarian (in ideals) that try to englobe the whole world one day Soviet union does not seem a popular view.
 
Isn't 350nm basically impervious to radiation and EMPs? This is why we still use PowerPC-based chips for satellites.
 
LukeTbk said:
Maybe not that big, but we can imagine that (above 100nm) are still being used, during the 2021-2022 car chips supply, lack of 90nm and above production was a big deal, in military tanks, plane, industrial, petrol Russian tech...

Going from 300nm to 90nm to 40nm could be quite fast, we can imagine it is going to the 20-14 and below that get really challenging once you got good at the old node.

Think about all the things that do not need, not even close a core 2 duo amount of compute and can affort to use power-space... it is quite common.
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Gotta start somewhere, might as well start with a “modern” 350 and work down.
It would have been impressive to a large degree if they had started out the gate at sub 100, that would have required condensing decades of research and practice into a few years and that’s a tricky thing to do.
 
NukeDukem said:
The sanctions have completely backfired. Germany is being de-industrialized as we speak due to the loss of the cheap energy it required, the UK economy is contracting, and the Russian economy is growing. They have natural resources everyone in the world will buy regardless of sanctions, and the US has printed fiat currency. Who has the better long-game strategy? Who has the astronomical debt? And yes, they are winning their war of attrition on the battlefield in Ukraine as well.

It's not looking good for the west no matter how much you want to lie to yourself.
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Russia has a wartime economy. That’s why it looks good. This does not mean they’re positioned for long term growth. This does not mean everything is going swimmingly in the country. The needs of a wartime economy and a peace time economy differ. It‘s also why they have to take measures like this one.

Also, if you hate your “worthless US fiat currency” so much, feel free to send me what you have, I’ll gladly accept it.
 
HockeyJon said:
Russia has a wartime economy. That’s why it looks good. This does not mean they’re positioned for long term growth. This does not mean everything is going swimmingly in the country. The needs of a wartime economy and a peace time economy differ. It‘s also why they have to take measures like this one.

Also, if you hate your “worthless US fiat currency” so much, feel free to send me what you have, I’ll gladly accept it.
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The more important point is Europe is getting burned by western sanctions, NOT Russia. Germany is done without that cheap Russian energy. Their own leadership allowing the country to be decimated economically is madness. Pure insanity. A testament to the fact they are a vassal state of the US and do what they're told.

And I didn't say fiat was worthless. But the US weaponizing the dollar is a dangerous game, and it's NOT worked against Russia. They proved they could beat the sanctions, because at the end of the day their resources are valuable to the global south and our dollar will not reign supreme forever. People are always going to need the resources, and they can certainly find other currencies to trade with. Bilateral agreements between individual countries is a thing and if those dollars ever come home to roost.... they will become ever more "worthless".

I guess it's become political and I am off topic, so I'll be done ranting now.
 
HockeyJon said:
Russia has a wartime economy. T
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Russia is burning the candle at both ends. L
HockeyJon said:
hat’s why it looks good. This does not mean they’re positioned for long term growth. This does not mean everything is going swimmingly in the country. The needs of a wartime economy and a peace time economy differ. It‘s also why they have to take measures like this one
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These days, what does Russia successfully sell on the world market except oil, some minerals, and weapons? Would you buy a Russian-made car? A Russian disk drive? TV? Washing machine?

Oh and what about the talent pool there? I'm not talking about ballet dancers, but skilled engineers, etc. The pool of skilled engineers who are not working in the wartime economy? And the software developers? The ones who didn't leave the country for those few countries that would accept them? And how does this economy hold up after Putin leaves the scene? The guy is no youngster and there are persistent rumors about his health, although they may be disinformation.

I don't want to veer too much into speculation, but I expect that Russia will be more and more dependent in China in coming years? And maybe Xi will covert lots of territory in Siberia after he has swallowed up Taiwan.
 
philb2 said:
Russia is burning the candle at both ends. L

These days, what does Russia successfully sell on the world market except oil, some minerals, and weapons? Would you buy a Russian-made car? A Russian disk drive? TV? Washing machine?

Oh and what about the talent pool there? I'm not talking about ballet dancers, but skilled engineers, etc. The pool of skilled engineers who are not working in the wartime economy? And the software developers? The ones who didn't leave the country for those few countries that would accept them? And how does this economy hold up after Putin leaves the scene? The guy is no youngster and there are persistent rumors about his health, although they may be disinformation.

I don't want to veer too much into speculation, but I expect that Russia will be more and more dependent in China in coming years? And maybe Xi will covert lots of territory in Siberia after he has swallowed up Taiwan.
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Probably China’s intention to make the population dependent on them over the next decade and change.
 
DPI said:
If they were resolutely secure in the belief that things are going well for their invasion and genocide, I doubt they'd be sweating a propaganda stunt to try to change perception.

Same as the "sanctions aren't working" trope. If they weren't having an impact, there probably wouldn't be this sudden desperation to figure out how to build chip fabs.
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The International Court of Justice shot-down the (obviously-false) genocide claim, Russia has complete control of the battlefield, and Russia's economy is doing better than ever before, is out-performing all Western economies by a very-large margin, and looks set to continue outperforming the West into the foreseeable future. The sanctions have been effective mainly at forcing the international community to dump the West and re-align themselves around Russia, China, and other non-Western countries.

Last year, Russia had real-wages growth (the increase of wages after factoring in inflation - which means Russians became wealthier, after inflation) of 7.8%, while all Western countries had real-wages decline (which means Westerners became poorer). And the same thing is happening this year. World Economics, and now World Bank (reportedly, haven't yet seen the data), have released their 2024 GDP estimates showing Russia's GDP PPP becoming the 4th-largest in the world this year, surpassing Japan's economy, after Russia surpassed Germany's in 2022. That's still before factoring-in Russia's uncommonly-large black / informal economy, which is estimated to represent anywhere from 15% to 40% of Russia's total GDP (for comparison, Japan's informal economy is estimated to be around just 9% of its total GDP).

And it's not simply a wartime economy that's driving Russia's growth. Diversification of economy has been a significant project of the government for years, and business of all kinds has been growing in Russia. A lot of Western businesses that were operating in Russia have lost market share to homegrown replacements that are now also taking market share from Western companies in global trade.

Just a few perception-correcting things to point out.

HockeyJon said:
They’re doing it because they have to. They don’t want to walk away from Putin’s “restoration of the Soviet Union” ambitions, and the price for that is Western sanctions. They know they can be cut-off and need to begin to figure out how to do this themselves, just like they did during the Soviet Union.
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I'm not sure why you put something Putin's never said in quotations. Restoring the Soviet Union has never been a goal of Putin's, and he said anyone who wants to restore the Soviet Union has no brain.

philb2 said:
Russia is burning the candle at both ends. L

These days, what does Russia successfully sell on the world market except oil, some minerals, and weapons? Would you buy a Russian-made car? A Russian disk drive? TV? Washing machine?

Oh and what about the talent pool there? I'm not talking about ballet dancers, but skilled engineers, etc. The pool of skilled engineers who are not working in the wartime economy? And the software developers? The ones who didn't leave the country for those few countries that would accept them? And how does this economy hold up after Putin leaves the scene? The guy is no youngster and there are persistent rumors about his health, although they may be disinformation.

I don't want to veer too much into speculation, but I expect that Russia will be more and more dependent in China in coming years? And maybe Xi will covert lots of territory in Siberia after he has swallowed up Taiwan.
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Car sales in Russia have been soaring, most of them being Russian brands, with Chinese brands being the next biggest sellers (China is making some nice cars for very cheap, these days - and the US govt isn't happy about that). Calling Russia's economy a full war economy is an exaggeration and part of sneering propaganda that seems to be what is most valued in Western media sources, rather than objective information that could lead to effective decisions being made.

Russia has one of the most educated societies in the world, and produces the most engineers in the world. So whatever amount of people exited Russia before probably aren't going to leave Russia in dire straits. And reportedly half of the Russians who left Russia have since returned.

Click any of these for larger versions with the details readable:

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24-05-02 - 45% of self-exiled Rus return to Rus.jpg
07 - 24 - Rus' trade volume with China.png
07 - 24 - Rus' trade volume with Brazil.png
24-04-16 - IMF - Rus economy to grow faster than all West's.jpg
24-01-17 - how Russia won the sanctions war with the West.jpg
24-04-03 - Rus less reliant on oil & gas.jpg



From start to finish, everything the West has claimed about Russia (since basically always), Ukraine, the Ukraine war, and the West's role in it has been nothing but lies. But bad information leads to bad policies. And the propensity of Western propaganda to tell people self-gratifying fiction that doesn't have even one toe in reality has been making the West's downfall a lot bigger and harsher than it needed to be. When reading comments of that type, part of me wants to not respond but just ignore them, because they're so disconnected from reality. But another part wants to at least try to quell some of the misinformation.
 
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erek said:
Chinese tech firms should focus on legacy chips and 3D packaging instead of cutting-edge process nodes.

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-i...stead-of-racing-towards-3nm-and-smaller-nodes
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Chasing the best is expensive and exclusionary, but if China could figure out how to clone Intels 14nm and use that for mass production… most of the worlds IC’s are still out there on the 90nm range because it’s tough as nails. Intel 14 is just as tough and far smaller while using relatively modern wafers and such.
Having bulk access to that node across the country would kick off a minor consumer revolution. Having SMIC clone and advance that with cleaner power delivery or a newer gate structure would be a big deal for many industrial applications.
 
philb2 said:
Russia is burning the candle at both ends. L

These days, what does Russia successfully sell on the world market except oil, some minerals, and weapons? Would you buy a Russian-made car? A Russian disk drive? TV? Washing machine?

Oh and what about the talent pool there? I'm not talking about ballet dancers, but skilled engineers, etc. The pool of skilled engineers who are not working in the wartime economy? And the software developers? The ones who didn't leave the country for those few countries that would accept them? And how does this economy hold up after Putin leaves the scene? The guy is no youngster and there are persistent rumors about his health, although they may be disinformation.

I don't want to veer too much into speculation, but I expect that Russia will be more and more dependent in China in coming years? And maybe Xi will covert lots of territory in Siberia after he has swallowed up Taiwan.
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That's just the thing. A wartime economy is "productive", but it's not what brings long term wealth to a nation.

Russia has definitely lost productive talent over this, no doubt about it. That's going to make it difficult to achieve their self-sufficiency projects like the one in this thread.

I fully believe China is interested in turning Russia into a vassal state. Russia doesn't have much of a choice at this point but to put up with China's conditions since they need them as a trading partner, and China's taking full advantage because it enables them to secure cheap resources from a now dependent Russia.
 
NukeDukem said:
The more important point is Europe is getting burned by western sanctions, NOT Russia. Germany is done without that cheap Russian energy. Their own leadership allowing the country to be decimated economically is madness. Pure insanity. A testament to the fact they are a vassal state of the US and do what they're told.

And I didn't say fiat was worthless. But the US weaponizing the dollar is a dangerous game, and it's NOT worked against Russia. They proved they could beat the sanctions, because at the end of the day their resources are valuable to the global south and our dollar will not reign supreme forever. People are always going to need the resources, and they can certainly find other currencies to trade with. Bilateral agreements between individual countries is a thing and if those dollars ever come home to roost.... they will become ever more "worthless".

I guess it's become political and I am off topic, so I'll be done ranting now.
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Western Europe is getting burned by bad planning that Eastern Europeans warned them about decades ago. Some lessons are learned hard. To suggest Russia is getting away with this unscathed, however, is simply ignorant. This thread is literally demonstrating that they're not getting by unscathed.
 
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HockeyJon said:
Western Europe is getting burned by bad planning that Eastern Europeans warned them about decades ago. Some lessons are learned hard. To suggest Russia is getting away with this unscathed, however, is simply ignorant. This thread is literally demonstrating that they're not getting by unscathed.
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I never said they were "unscathed". They're fighting (and winning) a war! Against NATO expansion into their back yard that they warned against for decades. Neutrality for Ukraine, simple stuff. They consider it existential to their survival whether you agree with them or not! They've got the nukes and the tech to deliver them, so they have a say! Deal with it!
 
Delicieuxz said:
I'm not sure why you put something Putin's never said in quotations. Restoring the Soviet Union has never been a goal of Putin's, and he said anyone who wants to restore the Soviet Union has no brain.
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https://www.euronews.com/2021/12/13/uk-russia-putin-ussr

And

https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...with-mission-return-russian-lands-2022-06-09/

But whatever you want to tell yourself.

Before you say "western propaganda blah blah blah", his Peter the Great speech was available on the Russian embassy's website, which is where I read it. He's made his intentions clear, but you can believe whatever you want.
 
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