Russian Baikal Electronics Set to Take on Nvidia with AI ASICs

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Baikal assembling AI ASIC development team.

Baikal Electronics
(Image credit: Baikal Electronics)

Baikal Electronics, a Russian developer of processors and system-on-chips, is gearing up to develop AI processors to address the country's needs for artificial intelligence applications. The venture expected to span three years and costing potentially 2 billion rubles ($21.25 million), according to estimates by a former employee of MCST, another Russian CPU developer.

"A new division has been formed to develop a lineup of specialized chips for artificial intelligence, which will adopt the best architectural practices existing at the moment," said Andrey Evdokimov, chief executive of Baikal, in an interview with CNews. "A key task for the team is to build a software ecosystem for the new processors."

The new division will focus exclusively on building application-specific integrated circuits (ASICs) for artificial intelligence application. The high-ranking executive of the company did not mention whether its ASIC will be designed for training or inference, or will be optimized to run both type of workloads, like Nvidia's high-end GPUs. In fact,specific aspects like the project timeline, financial commitments, and intricate details of the chip development remain confidential.

When it comes to hardware used for AI training and inference, Nvidia leads the market and effectively monopolizes certain segments of AI hardware solutions. Meanwhile, export of high-end Nvidia products, such as A100 and H100, to China and Russia is barred by the U.S. export rules. 

"The leader in the development of specialized chips for artificial intelligence is Nvidia, which can effectively be considered a monopolist in certain segments of hardware solutions," said Maxim Maslov, the lead developer of AI ASICs at Baikal. "The export of Nvidia products to Russia is officially prohibited, and there are also restrictions on exporting advanced solutions to China."

While Nvidia has developed cut-down A800 and H800 versions of its compute GPUs for China, it does not look like these parts are available for Russian customers.

"Despite the critical importance of specialized hardware for the development of artificial intelligence technologies, the gap between leading global and Russian developments is evident," Maslov added. "Existing domestic solutions are niche and do not cover the entire spectrum of necessary tasks, lacking the necessary software ecosystem."  

Baikal believes that this gives the company a chance to address Russia's needs for AI hardware in the coming years. What is unclear is where Baikal plans to produce its AI chips. Taiwan restricts shipments of advanced processors to Russia and Belarus, so TSMC and UMC can be excluded from the list of potential makers. U.S.-based Intel and GlobalFoundries are also unlikely candidates due to sanctions against Russia by the U.S. and Europe. In theory, China-based SMIC can make certain chips for Baikal, but it may turn such orders down fearing further scrutiny from the U.S. government.

Amazon Web Services and Google also have their own AI processors for training and inference and they are available in the cloud. Meanwhile, it is unclear whether Russian companies use these AI cloud services.

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Anton Shilov
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.

11 Comments Comment from the forums
  • hotaru251
    I see this as a very uphill thing for Russia...
    ignoring the political aspects they are limited on what they can use. That is a huge hurdle as the competition has much better access and stuff.
    Reply
  • atomicWAR
    hotaru251 said:
    I see this as a very uphill thing for Russia...
    ignoring the political aspects they are limited on what they can use. That is a huge hurdle as the competition has much better access and stuff.
    Agreed. Its tough atm to see how Russia could compete. I'd think they'd have an easier time convincing water it isn't wet considering Russia's current economic and technologic status in the world right now.
    Reply
  • gg83
    The Russian people are by far some of the most creative and deep thinking people I have ever met. If we weren't in the situation we are in now, Russia could be kicking butt in the tech space. I have a hard time believing Nvidia is worried about competitors in the AI space for a while.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    The venture expected to span three years and costing potentially 2 billion rubles ($21.25 million), according to estimates by a former employee of MCST, another Russian CPU developer.
    According to what I've heard about modern chip design, that's at the very low end of what it would take to design something even for an old process node. And that probably even assumes you're mostly repurposing existing IP.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    hotaru251 said:
    ignoring the political aspects they are limited on what they can use. That is a huge hurdle as the competition has much better access and stuff.
    Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they can still use Korean fabs? If not, doesn't China have some 14 nm-grade production lines?
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    atomicWAR said:
    I'd think they'd have an easier time convincing water it isn't wet
    but water is not wet.

    Water makes stuff wet but itself is not wet.
    Reply
  • kerberos_20
    hotaru251 said:
    but water is not wet.

    Water makes stuff wet but itself is not wet.
    water is very corrosive, avoid touching
    Reply
  • usertests
    In theory, China-based SMIC can make certain chips for Baikal, but it may turn such orders down fearing further scrutiny from the U.S. government.
    I can't imagine that situation will last forever. China is already seething about the U.S. dictating who they can sell to, and you can see that with the derailment of the Intel/Tower merger and threats of mineral export restrictions. By some point they will just do what they want.

    SMIC is aiming for a non-EUV 5nm node by 2025. SMIC's 7nm or 5nm nodes should be pretty good. But even if Russia is stuck at 28nm, optimization can reduce hardware needs for AI.
    Reply
  • peachpuff
    gg83 said:
    If we weren't in the situation we are in now, Russia could be kicking butt in the tech space.
    Right, they'd be using their amazing in house technique of importation to kick everyone's butt. Don't kid yourself, they're decades behind in tech to the rest of the world.
    Reply
  • bit_user
    peachpuff said:
    Right, they'd be using their amazing in house technique of importation to kick everyone's butt. Don't kid yourself, they're decades behind in tech to the rest of the world.
    Yeah, it's one thing to make an argument there are enough smart people in a country, but it's another to argue about what would be the state of their industry, because the latter depends on a lot of other factors. Things like the investment climate and the prevalence of corruption weigh heavily here.

    Regardless, I think one probably can't extrapolate the trajectory of Russia's tech industry up to 2014 and have a credible argument that they would be "kicking butt in the tech space", if by that you mean CPUs and GPUs.
    Reply