Russia does not trust the US and its allies in the least. And in the current situation of tension that they are experiencing, it is understandable. In fact, it is evident that the distrust is mutual. The interesting thing is that the suspicions are not limited only to the field of geopolitics; they permeate everything. And critical infrastructures, among which are nuclear power plants, are a strategic resource for any country that has opted for this electricity generation technology.

Starting January 1, 2030, no Russian nuclear plant will be able to use foreign hardware in its IT infrastructure. Nor software implemented outside the country. This measure has been decreed by the Russian Government and extends to all critical infrastructures of the Federation. The most surprising thing is that at the moment Russia does not produce the hardware that is usually used in these facilities, which has led the Ministry of Digital Development to make an exotic decision.

This is the hardware that Russia has chosen

The country led by Vladimir Putin has its own alternative to the Raspberry Pi: the Elbrus programmable logic controller, which is derived from the MCST Elbrus-2S3 processor developed by Roselectronics. The Russian Ministry of Digital Development has certified this hardware so that it can be used in the country’s critical infrastructures to develop automated process control systems.

Currently this hardware is already present in some Russian nuclear plants and is being tested in several oil and gas facilities. However, its specifications clearly reflect that its power is moderatealthough, apparently, sufficient for the use scenarios for which the Ministry of Digital Development has certified it. This is probably a compromise solution that will be replaced in the future when Russia has the capacity to produce more ambitious hardware of its own.

The Elbrus-2S3 SoC incorporates two general-purpose cores, works at a maximum clock frequency of 2 GHz, can coexist with up to 8 GB of DDR4-3200 type memory in dual-channel configuration and incorporates PCI Express 3.0 links. It is evident that this is relatively modest hardware that in no case will be able to deal with very demanding workloads. In all likelihood, to carry out more rigorous processes, Russia will have to continue using foreign hardware that it still has access to thanks to secondary markets and parallel import channels.

For years, Russian Elbrus and Baikal processors have been manufactured by TSMC in Taiwan using relatively advanced integration technologies. In fact, the Elbrus 2S3 SoC came from the 16nm node from this Taiwanese company. The problem for Russia is that from December 2022 TSMC cannot produce more integrated circuits of this type because the US and Taiwan sanctions prevent it from doing so. It is currently unclear where MCST will manufacture its Elbrus chips, but it will likely be in Russia itself and using less advanced photolithography than that used by TSMC at the time.

At the end of last May, Vasily Shpak, Deputy Minister of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, announced during the “Digital Industry of Industrial Russia” conference that his country has already prepared its first extreme ultraviolet photolithography equipment. In addition, he confirmed that its construction is entirely Russian and anticipated that this first EUV machine is capable of producing 350 nm integrated circuits. However, this is only the first step. The Government led by Vladimir Putin intends to have a prototype of EUV lithography equipment ready in 2026 capable of manufacturing 130 nm chips. And in 2028 another similar one capable of producing 7nm integrated circuits. We’ll see what this declaration of intent ultimately turns out to be.

Image | Alexey Danichev / Алексей Даничев

More information | Tom’s Hardware

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