As we all know, the chip is the soul of informationized weapons and equipment, the chip level of a country directly determines the advanced degree of weapons and equipment, if ranked according to revenue revenue, in 2020, in the ranking of the world's top ten semiconductor manufacturers, the United States accounts for 6, South Korea accounts for 2, Japan accounts for 1, And Xiaowan accounts for 1.
Ranking of the world's top ten semiconductor manufacturers
If you rank according to R&D expenditure, personnel size, etc., the ranking is different, but without exception, no Russian company can make the list.
From the current point of view, Russia's chip scientific research capabilities are not strong, compared with the United States and Europe, its chip level is at least more than 10 years apart.
Subject to this, we can not see what best-selling mobile phones, cars and household appliances in Russia, etc., many civilian products in Russia are subject to chip technology, there is almost no sales in the world, of course, there is no sense of existence.
Although Russia's chip technology is not strong, its weapons and equipment are extremely advanced, which is also an important reason why Russia's arms trade has long been ranked second in the world
According to Western media reports, in 2019, the GPS system of the United States covering the Middle East was suppressed by the interference of mysterious electromagnetic waves and completely paralyzed in a period of time, which interrupted civilian and military communications in many countries such as Israel, affecting thousands of square kilometers.
The US military immediately conducted an analysis and believed that the electronic jamming was carried out by Russia, because Russia has a Homememe air base in Syria, which has the Russian military's electronic warfare system, and the US military judges through distance that the interference signal is sent by the Homememem air base.
The Russian military can use the electronic warfare system to effectively interfere with the GPS of the US military, resulting in many precision-guided weapons of the US military failing under the interference of the Russian military, which also shows that the russian military's electronic warfare equipment is still extremely advanced.
Russian weapons and equipment have always given people the impression of being stupid and stupid, and it is difficult to create very small and delicate electronic warfare equipment, which has surprised the United States, and it is even more jealous of the Russian army, and dare not confront the Russian army head-on.
Chip technology is listed by the United States as a key technology, the United States and other Western countries not only block chip technology to Russia, but also impose an embargo on high-performance chips, Russia chip technology is backward, there is no high-performance chip Russia, but why is the weaponry extremely advanced?
To understand this problem, we need to figure out why Russia's chip technology is lagging behind.
Russia's chip technology and foundation is inherited from the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union implemented a planned economic system, the Soviet Union divided the work of various countries and regions, such as East Germany production of precision instruments, Vietnam planting rice, Ukrainian farming cattle, Kazakhstan cotton picking, Belarus made trucks and so on.
At that time, microelectronics was absolutely high-tech, all the republics wanted to develop, the Soviet Union in order to balance the interests of the republics, the microelectronics production was split and distributed to the republics, which led to the collapse of the Soviet Union, each country has a little microelectronics industry, but in each republic are very fragmented, forming a complete industrial chain.
Because the Soviet Union implemented a planned economic system, all microelectronic units and enterprises are state, of course, they are also eating financial meals, so it does not matter whether they make money or not, the key microelectronic products must be able to ensure national defense and security, because there is no market competition, so the efficiency is not high.
At the beginning of the Cold War, integrated circuit technology was just emerging, and integrated circuits had two development routes, namely the transistor route and the electron tube route.
As far as electron tubes and transistors are concerned, transistors are small in size, small in power consumption, have a long service life, and have obvious advantages over electron tubes, and it can be said that transistors are more advanced forms of electron tubes.
transistor
But also because the transistor is small and advanced, so there are many faults, anti-interference and anti-radiation ability is weak, under the conditions of nuclear war, the anti-radiation ability of the electron tube is much stronger than the transistor, at that time in terms of volume, the transistor is smaller than the electron tube, but the technology at that time was not much smaller.
Although the technology of electron tubes and transistors has developed, the development of transistor technology is faster, especially the miniaturization of transistors, and later developed to the nanometer level, which is probably not expected by the Russians.
The collapse of the Soviet Union has left Russia with an uneven development of light and heavy industries, a backward semiconductor industry, especially a backward chip technology, and Russia wants to catch up, but it has more than enough and is insufficient.
Compared with other industries, the semiconductor industry needs to continuously carry out technological iteration, which is both a technology-intensive industry and a capital-intensive industry, which not only requires a lot of investment, but also requires a certain market scale, and requires a long period of accumulation.
When Russia was first established, shock therapy was introduced, resulting in a serious economic regression, more backward private enterprises, and Chechnya's troubles, Russia was forced to launch two Chechen wars in 1994 and 1999, although Chechnya was eventually conquered by Russia, but also consumed Russia's national treasury.
After 2000, Russia's economy began to recover, but in 2008 it fought another war in Georgia, and in 2011 the economy turned a few years away, and in 2014 there was a crimea crisis, and Russia sent troops to Crimea to empty the treasury again.
Coupled with the continuous sanctions imposed by the United States, a large number of scientific and technological talents have been lost, there is no capital injection, and most of the budding private enterprises have died.
For example, there is a Yoga Devices mobile phone company in Russia, which produces the YotaPhone series of smartphones, and its Release YotaPhone 3 phone also won the 2018 German iF Design Award.
The rounded Design YotaPhone 2 phone
But the company went bankrupt in 2019 because of Russia's limited domestic market, very competitive mobile phones from China, the United States and South Korea, and little capital injection, and the Russian mobile phone company eventually went bankrupt.
The death of the Russian mobile phone company is just a microcosm of the development of the Russian electronics industry.
Because Russia does not have many civilian electronic products, there is not much demand for chips, and today's Russian civilian electronic consumer goods market accounts for less than 2% of the global share.
The Semiconductor Industry Association of the United States released a research report in which Americans estimated that Russia's semiconductor purchases accounted for less than one-thousandth of the global total.
Most of today's consumer goods need chips, such as mobile phones, cars, home appliances, computers, etc., it is precisely because Russia's chip technology is backward, and the United States implements a strict blockade of high-performance chips, which causes civilian products that need chips to not develop in Russia, and Russia's economy can only rely on energy and military support.
This creates a vicious circle in which it is expected that Russia's economy will become increasingly difficult due to chip technology.
Russia's chip technology is backward, but why is the military industry developed? This is related to Russia's anti-natural systems engineering capabilities.
What is systems engineering capability? To use an analogy, the same pile of wood, ordinary people can pile up into a house, but the master can pile up warships, aircraft and cannons, this is the ability of systems engineering.
People who have seen the Romance of the Three Kingdoms know that Zhuge Liang can use ordinary wood to create wooden cattle and horses, which can be used to transport military food, and is a means of transportation that exceeds the level of contemporary science and technology. Zhuge Liang was able to create wooden cattle and horses by relying on system engineering capabilities.
We can compare the phased array radar of the United States and Russia, and the Signal Processing Part of the American Patriot Phased Array Radar uses advanced digital chips, so it is possible to quickly calculate the flight speed of the detection target.
Russia does not have a high-end chip at all, so it uses a "he-excitation crystal oscillator" to replace the chip, which is an outdated analog circuit design, which is larger than the chip, but smaller than the general integrated circuit.
Therefore, Russia's air defense missile phased array radar, its size is larger than the United States, it looks a bit silly and stupid, but from the core indicators, the United States is at the same level, and the anti-jamming performance is still stronger than the United States.
Americans have specifically studied the Russian S300 radar, and they are full of praise for the performance of this radar, believing that this radar is "high-performance, low-cost, low-power", and evaluating the Russians' strong independent innovation ability.
S300 surface-to-air missile
That is to say, the Americans use the most advanced parts and advanced assembly technology to create advanced equipment, while Russian parts are not advanced, but relying on the ability of anti-natural system engineering, they can also create advanced equipment.
Russian equipment can be said to be inexpensive, but it is very useful.
Some people say that if you give the Russians a pile of broken iron, the Americans can only sell it as scrap iron, but the Russians can become a big weapon that sweeps through thousands of troops.
On September 6, 1976, the Soviet air defense pilot Berenko piloted a MiG-25 fighter jet through Japan's tight air defense network and landed at the Japanese airfield of Hakodate, which surprised Japan and the United States, and in front of the MiG-25 fighter, Japan's air defense system was useless.
After receiving the news, the Americans immediately sent technicians to Japan to study the MiG-25 fighter, and the aircraft was unloaded in eight pieces and transported to the Baili Air Base in central Japan.
The result was very surprising to american technicians that the material of this fighter was very ordinary, mainly made of stainless steel, only the key parts were made of a little titanium alloy, the welding was done by hand, and the workmanship was relatively rough.
The radar of the aircraft has a huge power of 600 kilowatts, but the main component is an outdated vacuum tube element, not an advanced solid-state electronic component, so the radar volume is large, but it can better adapt to extreme high temperatures, and also reduces the cooling requirements of the avionics equipment cabin.
The Americans looked at these technologically backward and poorly made parts and could not think of how the Soviets had turned them into a high-performance fighter. Based on the performance of the MiG-25, the Americans adjusted the performance parameters of the next generation of heavy fighters, and eventually gave birth to the F-15 fighter.
Defected to Japan in a MiG-25 fighter
There are two main reasons why the Russians have such an anti-heavenly ability to work systematically:
First, Russia's high-end manufacturing industry is not developed, and it is impossible to use the most advanced chips to make the most advanced weapons like the Americans, but can only use non-advanced chips to create weapons and equipment that can compete with the West.
This dilemma of "smart women being difficult to cook without rice" forced the Russians to improve their systems engineering capabilities to solve problems, and the Russians' systematic engineering capabilities were also forced out.
Today's Russia can build low-end chips, mainly to meet the needs of the military, because the military demand is small, can not be large-scale production, of course, can not achieve industrialization.
Practice has proved that it is feasible to use super system engineering capabilities to solve a specific problem, but this is not a long-term solution after all, for any industry, it is necessary to consider the return on investment, if you can not continue to make money, you can not increase R & D investment, is not conducive to long-term development.
China's early chip development also encountered this problem, to solve this problem, only under the guidance of the state to implement marketization.
Second, Russia's super system engineering capabilities benefit from Russia's solid level of basic theoretical research, because only by mastering the basic theoretical knowledge can we support the ideas and ideas of system engineering.
For example, the Italian painter Leonardo da Vinci, the teacher always let him repeat the drawing of eggs, in fact, the teacher let him play the basic skills, at first Leonardo da Vinci felt very bored.
The teacher told Leonardo da Vinci that the eggs in the world are not absolutely the same, even if it is the same egg, standing at different angles, the light projected is not the same, and the painting is also different, so painting eggs is the basic skill, as long as the basic skills are mastered, you can draw anything.
Leonardo da Vinci, who had a lot of wisdom, listened to the teacher's words and began to draw eggs carefully and patiently, and finally laid a good foundation for painting and became a world-renowned painter.
The author is from the engineering background, the author has a feeling, if you want to find a paper with a certain degree of mathematical foundation, and then find references in the paper, find the literature and then find the references inside, iterate within five steps, it must be Russian literature.
Don't look at the higher education bull in the United States, but specific to basic education, especially mathematics basic education, Russia is stronger, and the basic education in the United States cannot even catch up with China.
Russian students
If the basic theory is taken as the starting point and the product is regarded as the end point, only by thoroughly understanding the basic theory can we design the best route from the starting point to the end of the product.
Russia has a unique point in this regard, which is worthy of our study and reference, and it is also worthy of our profound reflection.