Report: Russia Switching to ARM Chips for Government PCs

Reports are all over the web with the information that the Russian government will be ditching all x86-based processors which means, of course, AMD and Intel.

The report indicates that a number of Russian government-owned companies will collaborate to design a new chip, based on the ARM architecture. These chips will be known as the Baikal chips. It is expected that these will be making their way into all government computers and computers owned by government-owned firms, which in total equates to about 700,000 PCs per annum along with about 300,000 servers.

Exactly what the motives are behind this plan remains unclear, though it is suggested that it may be due to fear of security leaks, despite the report making no mention of that. What the report does clearly state is that the chips from AMD and Intel are American made, which could mean anything.

The Baikal chips, which will first come out as the Baikal M and Baikal M/S chips, will be 64-bit Cortex A-57 chips with eight cores, each clocked at 2.0 GHz. They will be fabricated using a 28 nm lithographic process.

Time will tell how much of this will happen, or whether it is even true in the first place.

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Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

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31 Comments Comment from the forums

rantoc

A solution for paranoid nations i guess!
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Amdlova

it will save alot of power =)
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Avus

A solution for paranoid nations i guess!

It is more like the American can't be trusted from their point of view and I can definitely understand them... Remember the Russian are now known a lot more about USA "dirty trick" because of Edward Snowden. I think many other countries (like China, Germany...) that capable to make their own stuff should stop using USA stuff as well.
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rush21hit

I don't know why rantoc gets downvoted..I kinda agree with what he said. So let me just emphasize a little.

Any economically strong nations knows that data security is the very core of global economic domination. US does this for long time, so does China albeit just recently. It shouldn't be a surprise that Russia eventually would.

It's a necessary paranoia.

Mother Russia protects their own, I suppose :D
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Avus

I don't know why rantoc gets downvoted..I kinda agree with what he said. So let me just emphasize a little.

So when American cried for buy USA or move back the production back to USA are called Patriot but when other countries do the same it is called paranoia??
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sonofliberty08

NSA leave a back door on the x86 chips, specially on the mobile x86 atom chips for smartphones, they r badly coded, the smartphones will not turn off even u press the shutdown button, it will keep mining for data and drain the battery quickly.
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Onus

Russia and China are moving away from the US Dollar, using their own currencies for trade. This is another step in the process of knocking the dollar off its now-undeserved perch as the world's reserve currency. When that happens, the US economy will implode; think Wiemar Germany. It makes sense to not be dependent on American businesses for vital equipment and supplies.
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jasonelmore

it will save alot of power =)

Not really. just because it's a ARM CPU doesnt mean it defies the laws of physics. These 64bit chips are big chips, sometimes 8 way out of order CPU's. When the CPU is that wide, it will consume just as much as a Intel CPU.

Also, Intel's CPU's are on 14nm lithography and are being mass produced today, so their transistors are twice as small as 28nm chips. Plus they are orders of magnitude faster.

intel's fab's will always be 2 years ahead of everyone else's. unless they have a major catastrophic failure. They will always win in performance per watt.
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chicofehr

I wonder what OS they will use. I'm guessing Linux. Switching to a totally different OS is a big thing so I can't imagine it going very smoothly but with time it could work.
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jimmysmitty

13570230 said:
A solution for paranoid nations i guess!

It is more like the American can't be trusted from their point of view and I can definitely understand them... Remember the Russian are now known a lot more about USA "dirty trick" because of Edward Snowden. I think many other countries (like China, Germany...) that capable to make their own stuff should stop using USA stuff as well.

Yea because Russia, China and the rest of the world are clean angels who never do anything tricky or back handed.

The sad truth is that every country is the same and they all do things to protect their own interests. If you think any country is a saint and would never do anything like that, you might want to think again.

13570490 said:
Russia and China are moving away from the US Dollar, using their own currencies for trade. This is another step in the process of knocking the dollar off its now-undeserved perch as the world's reserve currency. When that happens, the US economy will implode; think Wiemar Germany. It makes sense to not be dependent on American businesses for vital equipment and supplies.

Actually I think the economic boom and massive spending pushed the US dollars value way up and that is why it became the currency of the world reserve. That and the fact that we spend more than the majority of countries combined and have a much higher GDP than any other.

I don't think any country should be dependent on US technology but then again ARM is UK based so they are not making their own CPU per say.

Still whatever they want to do. Putin has some weird ideas on how to run a country. Then again the US has been having some strange ideas too.
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