New russian 8-core CPU • Hacker News Board

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#41

Post by tribaal » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 4:08 PM UTC

nmrm wrote: post #22

fzltrp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a team developping a mips like architecture, with several produced iterations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson I don't know if Russia has the industry to mass produce it, but surely it has the skilled people to design it, and it may probably use foreign fabs for the remaining steps if necessary. As for the software, with an established ISA, they may quickly leverage exising open source solutions. Of…

If you're just worried about bugged hardware, why develop a new architecture? Can't you use your own clean room implementation of an existing architecture?

Yes, you're right, they could. But I suspect the decision is made of things like:

- If it proves to be actually good, they might actually sell some of those chips, too (it's developing their local high-tech sector. Even a tiny piece of the market is better than none at all, especially if their own agencies kickstart it).

- It highers the cost for foreign intelligence to write software for that platform: their arsenal of viruses and trojans are completely useless. Unless you acquire detailed specifications of the platform, find some test chips, develop new software and finally infect your target... Takes time and money.

- They get some (positive, for once) international press.

- They can parade how awesome mother Russia is to their own nationalist ego.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#42

Post by andyidsinga » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 4:10 PM UTC

> Система программирования платформы поддерживает языки С, С++, Java, Фортран-77, Фортран-90.

its interesting they called out support for fortan 77 and fortran 90

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#43

Post by JoeAltmaier » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 4:11 PM UTC

kjs3 wrote: post #34

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But look at that list of customers - hardly rich nations. Total sales? Millions. Profit - around zero.

Just because those nations aren't considered "rich", it doesn't mean they're penniless. Russia has a long history of profitable trade to that list of countries. They sold US$1.1 billion in goods to the Syrians alone in 2010. So the idea that they couldn't build an industry selling a good that those countries can't or won't buy from the West doesn't hold water.

Its a question of opportunity cost. Make a CPU to sell to Syria - you might make a few bucks (though I doubt it); could you have done better? Surely.

As for trade stats: the US SHOE industry is an order of magnitude larger than that - $20 billion annually {http://statisticbrain.com/footwear-industry-statistics/}. 1.1 billion seems like a big number until you consider: a chip manufacturing plant costs more than that.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#44

Post by Avshalom » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 4:16 PM UTC

andyidsinga wrote: post #42

> Система программирования платформы поддерживает языки С, С++, Java, Фортран-77, Фортран-90. its interesting they called out support for fortan 77 and fortran 90

It probably just means they ported gcc, but if it is supposed to mean more its probably just 'HPC is on our radar'

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#45

Post by fzltrp » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:32 PM UTC

tankenmate wrote: post #15

fzltrp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a team developping a mips like architecture, with several produced iterations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson I don't know if Russia has the industry to mass produce it, but surely it has the skilled people to design it, and it may probably use foreign fabs for the remaining steps if necessary. As for the software, with an established ISA, they may quickly leverage exising open source solutions. Of…

If they are concerned about bugged hardware (which is difficult to do and expensive), I don't think "bugged" software (which is much cheaper to replace) will be on their shopping list either...

True, what I meanbt is that the consumer software marketplace is originally built around those platforms. During the last several years, the market has been largely fragmented by tablets, but I have the impression they still represent a major segment. That said, industries and services may more easily accomodate the absence of these players.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#46

Post by fzltrp » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:36 PM UTC

nmrm wrote: post #22

fzltrp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China has a team developping a mips like architecture, with several produced iterations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson I don't know if Russia has the industry to mass produce it, but surely it has the skilled people to design it, and it may probably use foreign fabs for the remaining steps if necessary. As for the software, with an established ISA, they may quickly leverage exising open source solutions. Of…

If you're just worried about bugged hardware, why develop a new architecture? Can't you use your own clean room implementation of an existing architecture?

Someone else mentioned that the architecture is based of Sparc technology (Sun's line of CPUs, which is a mips derivative iirc). It's hardly a completely new architecture.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#47

Post by fzltrp » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

fzltrp wrote: post #10

tribaal wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it is purely political. Russia wants to be independent from the US for computers, because they fear (rightfully) American chips to be bugged. Having slow, expensive chips made in Russia is probably more interesting to certain agencies than fast and cheap American chips - or relying on typewriters :)

China has a team developping a mips like architecture, with several produced iterations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson I don't know if Russia has the industry to mass produce it, but surely it has the skilled people to design it, and it may probably use foreign fabs for the remaining steps if necessary. As for the software, with an established ISA, they may quickly leverage exising open source solutions. Of…

However, how difficult would it be for a foreign fab to rig the design of a customer and include backdoors?

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#48

Post by chdir » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:44 PM UTC

It's ironical that the top rated comment on HN for the past few hours is going against the "hacker" culture just because it's a government that's doing it?

There's no need to for them to match Intel at any level. The current generation of tablets & mobiles is ample proof that an open source OS and with ARM based processor is a good alternative for technical productivity and may very well replace Intel/MS for generic office tasks in the future.

As a country in post Snowden/NSA era, it makes absolute sense if they don't want to rely on US companies.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#49

Post by ChuckMcM » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:46 PM UTC

Running through Google translate [1] gives pretty sparse press release on the Elbrus-8. Interesting bits are 'binary translation of x86' and '25 instructions at one' so a 25 instruction super scalar pipeline and dynamic instruction translation, historically has been slow as the proverbial pig on non-native code. That arose from an incredible amount of memory churn (MemOPS) when running translated code slowing the processor down to the cycle time of DRAM (110 - 130nS or about a 10Mhz effective instruction rate[2].

I get the nationalist pride in wanting to build your own system but I think they could do wonders licensing the ARM A5x cores and starting from there rather than pushing so hard down the 'everything our self' road. Just look at the success many Chinese companies have had taking the ARM path (Allwinner is probably the most familiar example).

If there is someone reading who is part of this program or can advise them, I'd suggest they focus on building a 28nm FAB capability ala TSMC that they can use to make their own chips. Build a reliable semiconductor process and pipeline, and the use state money to subsidize the costs to pull foreign contracts into your FAB so that you can get a first look at people's ideas. If you are looking for strategic advantage that is a much better play than pushing out a computer architecture.

[1] Possibly translated link: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...

[2] For comparison this was the speed of the PC/AT 286 machine in "turbo" mode.

Re: New russian 8-core CPU

#50

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Jul 13, 2014, 5:55 PM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #49

Running through Google translate [1] gives pretty sparse press release on the Elbrus-8. Interesting bits are 'binary translation of x86' and '25 instructions at one' so a 25 instruction super scalar pipeline and dynamic instruction translation, historically has been slow as the proverbial pig on non-native code. That arose from an incredible amount of memory churn (MemOPS) when running translated code slowing the pro…

[deleted]