【Text/Observer Network Lv Dong】
After Intel and AMD in the X86 architecture camp have successively cut off supply to Russia, ARM, which dominates the field of mobile terminals, has also announced that it has joined the ranks of Sanctions against Russia. These actions, especially the supply cut of ARM, will undoubtedly hit the development of Russia's CPU independent industry.
But Russia is not immediately paralyzed. On the one hand, the inventory of Russian companies can still support for a period of time, on the other hand, there is an open source instruction set standard RISC-V for Russia's self-developed chips to choose from, and the RISC-V International Foundation has made it clear that it "does not hold a political position" after the headquarters moved to Switzerland.
For Russia, there is a bigger problem outside of chip design - chip manufacturing. After TSMC announced compliance with U.S. sanctions, a number of Russian self-developed CPUs faced the risk of not being able to produce. In the view of Western industry insiders, Russia's chip manufacturing technology lags behind TSMC by about 15 years, and Japan's supply of key materials and equipment will also increase the difficulty of Russian semiconductor manufacturing.
A compliance and export control expert told the Observer Network that Western sanctions against Russia will largely promote the formation of a new international sanctions coalition led by the United States, and a new "Paris Coordinating Committee" and even a new Cold War organization may emerge in the context of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The sanctions and experience against Russia may be reused by the United States on China, which is what we need to highlight and guard against. We should study in depth the development of the sanctions system from a macro and technical perspective, and its possible huge impact on the political and economic situation in China, Russia and even the world.
Three mainstream CPU design architectures
Will arm supply cuts be a "devastating" blow?
On March 18, local time, ARM said in an email sent to light reading, a foreign communications industry media, that "in order to comply with the export controls and economic sanctions issued by the governments of the United Kingdom, the European Union, the United States and other countries, ARM has suspended the delivery of products and support to Russian customers and partners." ”
ARM's headquarters are currently located in the UK, but the company's ownership belongs to Japan's SoftBank Group. Unlike Intel, AMD, Nvidia and other companies, ARM does not sell finished semiconductor products, but the microprocessor design and architecture IP provided by the company is being applied to mobile devices on a large scale, and ARM's customers include Qualcomm, Huawei, Apple and other companies.
Before ARM, the X86 camp represented by Intel and AMD has announced that it will stop supplying to Russia. In fact, as the West continues to increase sanctions against Russia in recent years, Russian companies have been trying to replace Intel and AMD's CPU products, and the country's self-developed Elbrus and Baikal processors use arm architecture.
Screenshot of light reading report
Light Reading commented that arm outages could be a "devastating" blow to Russian customers, who have long seen ARM as an alternative to the X86. The report also mentioned that with the successive supply cuts of Intel, AMD and ARM, Russia may lose the basic components needed to build and operate data centers, which are the infrastructure that underpins the Internet.
According to market research firm Omdia, by the end of 2021, 77% of the world's data center servers will use Intel processors, AMD's share is 18%, and the remaining 5% is based on ARM. Not only that, but ARM aims to capture 90% of the mobile processor market, 65% of the network equipment market, 25% of the data center/cloud market, 90% of the IoT chip market, and 90% of the in-vehicle infotainment and driver assistance market by 2028.
Source: Statista
Currently, Russia has smaller cloud service providers Yandex and Mail.ru, as well as data center operators such as DataLine and Rostelecom. In 2021, Yandex announced a partnership with Russian state-owned bank VTB to build its own server hardware business. Light Reading reported that Yandex wants to find an undimposed provider that could buy IP services directly from ARM or rely on Russian partners who have cooperation with ARM, but that is no longer an option.
Earlier this month, Yandex warned investors about supply issues. The company said in a statement, "We believe that the capabilities of our data centers and other technologies critical to our operations at this time will allow us to continue to operate normally for at least the next 12 to 18 months." However, if the supply of hardware, software or other technologies used in our business or products is interrupted for an extended period of time, and assuming we do not have access to alternative sources, our operations may be materially adversely affected over time. ”
Light Reading reported that it was unclear whether Russian carriers and cloud companies could find a workaround to get ARM-based processors from the British company's non-Russian customers. The report also mentioned that Chinese company Huawei also does not have access to chips using US technology, but Huawei has always relied on its relationship with ARM to design its own server processors. ARM declined to say whether its cooperation with Huawei is affected by the latest sanctions.
In March 2021, ARM pointed out in response to its partnership with Huawei that "ARM has both IP originating in the United States and IP not originating from the United States." After a thorough review, ARM determined that its ARM V9 architecture was not subject to the U.S. Export Administration Regulations (EAR). ARM has notified the relevant U.S. government departments of this, and we will continue to comply with the U.S. Department of Commerce's guidelines for Huawei and its affiliate HiSilicon. ”
In 2021, ARM releases the latest V9 architecture
For Russia, the latest moves by AMD, Intel and ARM will not cause an immediate "disaster", because Russia already has a stockpile of chips to keep data centers functioning. However, as Yandex reveals, this inventory will eventually run out. Manoj Sukumaran, principal analyst at Omdia's data center IT division, warned that Russian companies cut off processor supplies could be forced to "scale back their expansion plans" and internet services could be affected.
Light Reading cautioned that Russia also has an option to further invest in RISC-V, which is a replacement for the X86 and ARM architectures. Sukumaran revealed that several Russian companies are already developing processors that use RISC-V. These companies include technology investment firm Rustoc, server maker Yadro and design firm Syntacore. But given issues such as ecological maturity, RISC-V seems to have a long way to go to become a viable third option.
The Observer Network notes that the RISC-V International Foundation was founded in 2015 and that the agency moved its headquarters from the United States to Switzerland in March 2020. On its website, the RISC-V International Foundation writes, "We are registered in Switzerland and are a truly global organization. As a non-profit organization, the RISC-V International Foundation does not safeguard any commercial interests in products or services. NOR does RISC-V take a political position on behalf of any country or region. We are proud to see organizations from around the world working hand in hand in this new era of processor innovation. ”
Screenshot of the official website of the RISC-V International Foundation
In June 2021, Li Shimo, founder and managing partner of Capital and director of the International RISC-V Foundation, mentioned in his speech at the RISC-V 2021 China Summit:
I call Globalization 1.0 the X86 of the world order, a closed system in which any country must adopt Western liberal politics and neoliberal economy if it wants to develop in this system. Advances in science and technology have not solved these problems, but have consolidated the privileges of a few and exacerbated inequality. With the stranding of Globalization 1.0, humanity urgently needs the emergence of Globalization 2.0 to lead the world. From singleness to pluralism, from exclusivity to inclusion, from universality to universality, from closed x86 to open source RISC-V, this is the globalization 2.0 driven by the historical trend.
It is worth mentioning that at this summit, Bao Yungang, professor of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and researcher of the Institute of Computing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, released the core of the domestic open source high-performance RISC-V processor - Xiangshan. In February this year, Bao Yungang revealed on Weibo that Xiangshan has returned to the film, the debugging target has also been completed, and the performance optimization will continue in the future. At present, more than half of the seats on the board of directors of the RISC-V International Foundation come from Chinese companies, and technicians from China hold Positions in multiple technical leadership groups.
Screenshot of Bao Yungang's Weibo
Manufacturing remains a challenge
Admittedly, RISC-V's lack of political stance is good news for Russia, because Russian companies can still design chips based on RISC-V, but semiconductor manufacturing is still a major problem for Russia.
On March 19, local time, the Wall Street Journal published an article saying that South Korea and Taiwan, which provide high-end chips, and Japan, which provides key chip manufacturing materials and equipment such as photoresist, have announced a ban on exporting items to Russia that have been included in the export control list by the United States. These actions cut off Russia's access to high-end chips and the materials and equipment needed to produce them autonomously.
Screenshot of the Wall Street Journal report
Tom Rafferty, regional director for Asia at the Economist Intelligence Unit, said the impact of coordinated multinational sanctions would be enormous for Russia. "A massive export ban will target semiconductors, especially high-end semiconductors, who south Korea and Taiwan have virtually monopolized the production of." Therefore, there will be no such supply anywhere that Russia can rely on. ”
After the U.S. export controls on Russia, TSMC, the world's largest foundry, has said it will comply with U.S. export control measures. Samsung Electronics, which provides a large supply of memory chips and display panels, also announced that it has suspended the supply of all its products to Russia due to geopolitical developments and is monitoring the situation.
Western semiconductor industry executives who have studied the state of Russian industry say Russia's chip manufacturing technology lags behind industry leader TSMC by more than 15 years. The country's leading chipmaker, Mikron Group, said it was the only local Russian company capable of mass-producing 65-nanometer processes, a technology that had been mass-produced in the semiconductor industry around 2006. Mikron did not respond to a request for comment.
TSMC Process Development Roadmap Source: TSMC
At present, some of Russia's self-developed chips are orthogonally crossed by TSMC. In February this year, a source revealed to the Russian Business Consulting (RBC) that if TSMC refuses to cooperate, Russia's self-developed Elbus CPU (disclosed in research in 2015, foreign media reported that the high-performance version of Elbrus-8CB uses ARM architecture, TSMC 28nm process, at the end of 2021 was rumored to fail the test), Baikal CPU (Baikal-M model, ARM architecture, TSMC 28nm process, shipments began in October 2021) Processors such as skif SoCs will not be produced, and finding alternative foundries will be "quite difficult."
tom's HARDWARE: Russia's self-developed Elbrus CPU test failed, "a completely unacceptable platform"
But the Wall Street Journal also pointed out that while the sanctions appear to limit Russia's access to chip supply, the actual impact cannot be fully determined. Analysts point out that even if international technology sanctions go into effect immediately, their impact will take months, if not years, to manifest itself in Russia's strategic industries. According to the American Semiconductor Industry Association, Russia's direct purchase of chips is less than 0.1% of the world's, and analyst agency IDC data shows that Russia's ICT (information and communication technology) market size in 2021 is only about $50.3 billion, while the global market total is as high as $4.47 trillion.
In fact, semiconductors used in key areas such as national defense and military do not pay special attention to power consumption and area as consumer products, so the difficulty of research and development is relatively low. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce document, the latest export controls are aimed at Russian military users, and many ordinary electronic goods sold to Russian consumers are not included in the control. At the same time, if the equipment is used to ensure flight or navigation safety, supply to Western joint ventures in Russia, or have humanitarian uses, etc., even if it is within the control list, the application may still be approved. Executives at a research center in Washington said it was unlikely that Russia would get chips from devices such as smartphones and reuse them for weapons for cost and technical reasons.
This article is an exclusive manuscript of the Observer Network and may not be reproduced without authorization.