Russian Arm SoC now shipping in Russian PCs running Russian Linux Russian fabless semiconductor company Baikal is celebrating after local PC-maker IRU started using its silicon in a workstation. Baikal designs SoCs that employ Arm and MIPS technology. On the latter architecture, it offers the twin-core Baikal-T that it says is the "first silicon implementation of the MIPS P5600 CPU core with …
Ambition has always come at a price. But one has to ask whether the latest fastest shiniest hardware is a requisite for the majority of devices to be sat under/on office worker's desks. It seems to me that in most cases office workers' (and home users') requirements are for something that runs an office suite, a browser, and if you're really radical, perhaps an email client. A machine which would make a gamer happy would be out of place in such a use case - there's a reason why you don't see people popping down to the shops in a Ferrari.
I'm typing this on a Raspberry Pi 4, which is one of my daily drivers in this strange COVID/BYOD world -- and is probably comparable to the Russian offering (Linux, quad-core ARM64, 8G memory.) The other is a HP Elitebook provided by the client and running the inevitable Windows 10.
I use Teams on both -- one as native and the other as the web version on Chromium.
I can confirm that both experiences are equally unsatisfactory. The only real difference is that the RPi has an external webcam which can be positioned without tilting the screen.
My daughter uses a Pi 4 as her main machine. We did have some issues with Jitsi and Zoom while using Ubuntu. I have just installed
Everything else she needs: wordprocessors, web browsers, graphics (including quite large Krita drawings) works fine.
I suspect I could make do with one if I had to.
Teams (and videoconferencing in general) is hardly a requirement for most office duties (after all people managed quite well without it up to the early 2000's).
Some managerial types might find videoconferencing to be a large benefit - but for most office users email and telephone suffice. Look at a large civil service office - how many of them need to use conferencing facilities beyond email CC for their daily job.
Cheer up. For the scrotal hyperthermia to become a problem, you have to either a) sit with your legs close together, pinning your balls between your thighs, for quite a long time or b) point a heat source(laptop, hairdryer, whatever) directly at your wedding tackle, again for a long time.
Who DOES that? Talk about uncomfy!
Performance for most video-conferencing apps is largely driven by whether there is direct access to the GPU or not. On mobile devices this is almost always the case, otherwise video calling just wouldn't work. But on desktops, thanks to Electron, it's often not the case. However, as I normally disable both incoming and outgoing video after a brief initial greeting, this rarely a real problem.
Teams and that is a right processor hog when you start videoconferencing.
That has been for decades the problem with Microsoft products: they're so badly and inefficiently coded that you need to throw a lot of hardware at it to even run (ditto in the server arena). The Microsoft approach to performance improvement is equivalent to fitting a bigger engine to a car because they can't be asked to release the handbrake.
If office workers were to run decent software they would indeed not need so much hardware power.
As a non-consultant, I can only really talk about my own experience in a large company. The option to homework is here to stay and a big chunk of staff will be exercising that option. Which means that, even post-COVID, the vast majority of our internal and external meetings will be by videoconference.
the specs do not sound that bad to be honest. Also consider that they are running linux too, so odds are real good that the software will be a little better optimized. It sounds like a solid work machine, which harkens back to the commie days...
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Its not trivial to open up a new processor line, os for it and make it usable. If its equivalent to a pi or better, then great.
The use of FOSS in the workplace is laudable too - it can be done.
And then think of the generation of people who should support such a thing - agnostic to processors and knowing more about Linux than anyone - and able to scale to the server.
TBH, probably most users could more than get by with a pi equivalent for their basic work tasks - browser and productivity software - and an OS that at least nods at security (Linux) - though - lots of people here want their willy extension of a top end processor, lots of tera Hertz and Bytes and some shiny shiny...
As I understand it, they aren't targeting new computers but are replacing existing computer Windows installations completely with this OS. If it works it will be a major step towards Linux on the desktop.
Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that the source code is available and the license prohibits decompilation and disassembly. It also prohibits commercial use.
"the machines reflect Russia's desire to be less dependent on technology sourced from its antagonists in the West."
It make sense for a government to roll their own SOC especially for its own internal use due to the security concerns of buying off the shelf kit made by another country, especially if the country you are buying from has been outed for spying on its allies never mind less friendly nations.
After all even the US gov orders their Intel kit with the management engine disabled so they obviously worry it could be a security concern.
Well, they scr*wed the pooch on this one then. If they had left them powerful enough computers to drudge through the crud that is Windows, they would be running Windows, and thus ensure a backdoor to their entire national infrastructure like there is in practically any other country (which is one of the reasons I dislike any use of Windows in any government setting, but I digress).
Instead, the Russians have pretty much closed the door on them. Ironically, the US government and industry still runs Windows. Heck, even the majority of their voting systems do..
The ATM doesn't manage your money, it's just a dumb terminal into the system that manages your money. It could be a VT-100, it would still provide the same functionality. You using the thing makes no difference to the crooks[0], who target the back-end equipment.
[0] Strong-arm thugs standing behind you, waiting for you to withdraw funds, are an exception.
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