Russian Government's New Semiconductor Plan: Local 28nm by 2030

arm
(Image credit: Arm)

As it's being ostracized and sanctioned by much of the world for its war against Ukraine, Russia is building up plans to revive its ailing local manufacturing of semiconductors, since it cannot get chips from the usual suppliers. The country's new chip plan involves a rather massive investment over the next eight years, the goals don't exactly sound ambitious. For example, while TSMC plans to hit 2nm by 2026, Russia wants 28nm local chip manufacturing by 2030. 

Russia's government has developed a preliminary version of its new microelectronics development plan that requires investments of around ₽3.19 trillion ($38.43 billion) by 2030. The money will be spent on the development of local semiconductor production technologies, domestic chip development, datacenter infrastructure, developing of local talents, and marketing of homebrew chips and solutions, reports Cnews.

On the semiconductor manufacturing side of matters, the country plans to spend ₽420 billion ($5 billion) on new fabrication technologies and their ramp-up. One of the short-term goals is to ramp up local chip production using a 90nm fabrication technology by the end of the year. A longer-term goal is to establish manufacturing using a 28nm node by 2030, something TSMC did in 2011. 

Being historically rather successful with software and high-tech services, Russia has been comparatively unsuccessful with chip design and manufacturing. While there are plans to educate local talent and develop chips domestically, one of the things that the country plans to do by the end of the year is to establish a reverse engineering program of 'foreign solutions' to transfer their manufacturing to Russia. All digital items should be produced domestically by 2024. Things that the country cannot make domestically are expected to be sourced from China. 

While Russia's plan seems to contain a lot of items and sets some goals, it should be noted that so far even China has not managed to localize a substantial portion of critically important chip manufacturing. Whether or not Russia, which cannot use technologies developed in the U.S., U.K., or Europe, will achieve its goals by 2024 or 2030, is up in the air. But that doesn't mean there isn't a likely answer.

The plan is projected to be finalized and sent for official approval by the prime minister on April 22, 2022.

Anton Shilov
Contributing Writer

Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.

  • hotaru251
    i mean...short term? doubtful given sanctions & if putin does go nuclear the world will invade to stop him & that will push back that goal at least a decade.

    also i am actually shocked they are still on such a large node in 2022 ;o..
    Reply
  • Kamen Rider Blade
    Wow, they're still trying to hit 90 nm by the end of the year.

    Russia is trying to catch up to what the rest of the world had in 2003.

    ROFLMAO!
    Reply
  • Alvar "Miles" Udell
    So their plans are to copy AMD's timeline...Which means by next year after China has invaded Taiwan they'll have access to TSMC's advanced technology and just leapfrog on down.
    Reply
  • LolaGT
    Setting a goal to be 20 years behind everyone else seems reasonable, depending on your definition of reasonable.

    Their economic outlook has been set that far behind as well, and given the track record of internal.....strife, it doesn't look very promising that they will make good on those goals. .
    Reply
  • COLGeek
    Folks, please stick to the topic and not the politics of the day. Also, civility is a must for all. Thank you.
    Reply
  • demonicus
    Maybe its a 90mn by then but dont forget there is other technologies they may have created something that coincides that gives it like a 500% boost its possible they prob have a technology that makes it some sort of equivalent. Its been done like some sort of booster in the past.... helll einstein etc there is technologies out there they may know that we dont 90nm for all we know means nothing if they have some sort of booster expander addon whatever u wanna call it...some of the smartest people in the world ever worked on pc's there
    Reply
  • ex_bubblehead
    I will add to the warning above. Keep politics and other non relevant comments out of here or this comment section will be closed and the violators sanctioned as necessary. This is the last warning that will be issued.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    abufrejoval said:
    How dare you suggest, that politics are not relevant?
    This place...Tom's Hardware..is not the place for "political discussion".
    This is a tech forum.

    The topic of this particular thread is simply about a semiconductor plan and design.
    Has nothing to do with Putin, Ukraine, Russian politics, presidents.

    If you wish to discuss "politics", please do it elsewhere.

    Thank you.
    Reply
  • USAFRet
    abufrejoval said:
    When the vast majority of all social interactions are done in the Internet, how can the Internet not be political?

    The very notion that you can separate technology and politics is asinine.
    Sometimes, people would like to discuss tech concepts, without political crap slinging every single time.

    This Forum is one of those places.

    There is no end of other places you can discuss this.
    Just please...not in here.
    OK?
    Reply
  • Metteec
    It will be quite an accomplishment for Russia to go from 90nm to 28nm for $38B. Intel has a cooperative agreement with Ohio to invest $100B to create fabs that will go from 14nm to 2nm, and I can easily see cost overruns for that project. I think Russia might be understating the cost.
    Reply