
Russia wants to replace US computer chips with local processors - kator
http://en.itar-tass.com/economy/736804
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kator
I find it interesting that not so long ago we were all discussing back doors
Chinese manufacturers might be putting in our systems. Now the world is
worried about what we put in our systems that we export.

It seems over time this will create some very interesting market dynamics and
all sorts of "secure" clones of various technologies in different parts of the
world.

This is the beginning of the real cyber wars.. When technology is so
complicated you can only trust things you've built from scratch with your own
two hands. And even then you might have created some massive back door that
could be taken advantage of without you knowing.

Seems like the basis for a SciFi Movie.. :-)

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vitd
The cynic in me says that they don't want to avoid the US's surveillance so
much as they want to insert their own. If it were another European country, I
might assume otherwise, but Russia?

~~~
iSnow
If the Itar-tass article is right, this makes no sense because the chips are
destined for government computers and state-run companies. There are probably
easier ways to snoop on those computers.

And why would Russia not be afraid of the NSA, after all they are a prime
target.

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owenversteeg
I'm a vintage calculator collector (one of maybe 30 left in the world) and I
think it's interesting that the USSR tried to do this in the 70s with
calculators. It didn't work well.

As a result of the effort, thousands of American calculators were disassembled
and reassembled with Soviet cases and logos but American parts inside, so that
Soviet bureaucrats thought they were using calculators made in the USSR. In
reality, only a few calculators were made entirely in the USSR, and they were
below the quality of American/Japanese/English calculators.

~~~
hangonhn
Sure but this isn't the USSR anymore. I don't know to what degree the relevant
things are different. For one, Russia is nominally capitalist -- their
properties are a bit iffy at best though. Compared to the USSR, Russia is
considerably more open and free. And that might be just enough for good ideas
to flourish and good R&D to happen.

Intellectual freedom and capitalism are more of a gradient than categorical.
China is another example of this. They have been successful in some of their
R&D efforts despite not being a Western liberal democracy. China has in fact
produced their own chips, even if they aren't as good as what Intel and AMD
are capable of.

~~~
kjs3
The Chinese Loongson processors are MIPS64 architecture and fabricated by
STmicro (French company). So one could debate how home grown they are.

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jimbobimbo
The rule of thumb whenever you hear about a big hairy audacious _government_
project like this in Russia is: assume that someone had figured out how to
fleece a bunch of taxpayer's money off that. 99% the project won't go
anywhere, but all key people will get paid.

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asgard1024
So could someone design a "safe" operating system? Such that would distribute
the workload on two computers from two manufacturers, so that if either
computer was compromised by a different party, they wouldn't get any
meaningful result?

~~~
rz2k
Others have commented on here before about how that idea is incorporated into
flight control systems.

Here's an example with the Boeing 777 that uses separate architectures:

>The aircraft has triple redundant digital autopilot and flight director
designed by Rockwell Collins. The BAE Systems (formerly Marconi Avionics)
triple digital primary flight computers provide control limits and commands
flight envelope protection. Each of the three primary flight computers
contains three different and separate set of 32-bit microprocessors, Motorola,
Intel and AMD, to manage the functions of fly-by-wire.

\-
[http://777boeing.com/boeing-777-cockpit/](http://777boeing.com/boeing-777-cockpit/)

~~~
airplane
If I remember correctly, that doesn't mean all three autopilots are talking to
each other discussing what the best course of action is, it just means that
when one fails or is shut off by the pilot that the next auto pilot system in
line gets control.

If I also remember correctly, subsequent backup auto pilot systems usually
only do the basics, so they can't compare and contrast with the first main
auto pilot system on a lot of different actions.

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Spooky23
I'd like to win the lottery and ride a unicorn to work!

Seriously though, the costs associated with building modern chips are
ridiculous. So much so the much of the future R&D work is being done by
consortiums of companies like Sematech, who literally have billions of member
company and government dollars invested in development.

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informatimago
They should plan for an international market, not only for Russia government
agencies... I would definitely buy one.

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pagekicker
They tried this in the Cold War. Didn't work. Will fail again for same
reasons.

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throwaway29369
Also for private European citizens it makes sense to buy hardware that is
manufactured entirely in China or Russia. European governments have a long
history of ruthlessly harrassing and destroying the lives of innocent
citizens:

[http://courses.umass.edu/comm342/taubin.html](http://courses.umass.edu/comm342/taubin.html)

["The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum" is worth reading, better than the movie.]

I'm not claiming that things are better in China, but at least Chinese
authorities gathering data would rarely matter to a European citizen.

~~~
throwaway29369b
Please. Böll wrote about West Germany. But even in the 70s the situation was
much, much better than it has ever been in Russia or China in the last
century. And this includes both, freedom and social welfare. I can elaborate
if needed.

~~~
throwaway29369
I did not claim that the situation was as bad as in Russia or China. In
Germany government harassment of "terrorists" and other unwanted elements was
bad enough though. Heinrich Böll's treatment is well known.

It is true though that unlike today, Germany did have an actual terrorism
problem in the 1970s.

~~~
throwaway29369b
Ok, seems we are actually on the same page.

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walshemj
I am sure still have the designs for those knock off ICL mainframes they
copied from the single one they brought back in the 60's :-)

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contingencies
Decentralization is never a bad thing.

~~~
fiatmoney
Except for loss of economies of scale. Semiconductor fabs and nuclear reactors
are just about tied for the most expensive industrial plants you can build.

~~~
listic
It is not clear whether Russia is in fact planning to build its own top-notch
(28 nm, 16 nm) semiconductor fabs. I assume they won't, at least not at first.
Building "your own" ARM processors based on stock IP cores licensed from ARM
Holdings and fabricating them on commercially available foundries in Europe or
China looks like a reasonable way to escape the US-based Intel and AMD and
should not be ridiculously expensive.

~~~
wolf550e
How would you know the IP cores are not backdored or the fab is not inserting
flaws that cause backdoors[1]?

1 - [http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-
CHES.pdf](http://sharps.org/wp-content/uploads/BECKER-CHES.pdf)

~~~
listic
IP cores are just source, right? With fabs, you at least have some choice.

~~~
wolf550e
I know almost nothing about this, but:

(1) IP cores can be bought as "binaries with API", not as source. This is
cheaper, but much harder to inspect.

(2) I think that "compiling"[1] the source to some fab's process is not
completely automatic (they "recompile" or "handcode" some "functions" to
optimize power usage or max frequency), so you need to verify the "binary" is
faithful to your source, including on the analog level. Then you need to
verify the manufactured chip is faithful to the tape out[2] you verified, as a
3d apparatus, not just the xray.

1 -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_and_route](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Place_and_route)

2 - [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-
out](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tape-out)

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nobullet
Good luck, Russia, with sending yourself to dinosaurs.

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kjs3
The Soviets have a long history of "copying" and locally fabricating clones of
many western computer designs down to the chip level. See:
[http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_convers...](http://www.foia.cia.gov/sites/default/files/document_conversions/89801/DOC_0000500644.pdf)

