back to article Russia cobbles together supercomputing platform to wean off foreign suppliers

Russia is adapting to a world where it no longer has access to many technologies abroad with the development of a new supercomputer platform that can use foreign x86 processors such as Intel's in combination with the country's homegrown Elbrus processors. The new supercomputer reference system, dubbed "RSK Tornado," was …

  1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

    The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

    Any lead in quantum disciplines will render to Russia [and similarly perceived Middle and Far Eastern neighbours] what Russia and similarly perceived Middle and Far Eastern neighbours want and deserve. Any breaking news on that pioneering front?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

      I have been accused of information trading in the past, so I will be very brief here.

      Let's say this: Ukraine has proven the weakness of Russia in several different dimensions.

      If you wanto know more, stop reading the internet and join the British army.

      Be a *real* mars-man, as opposed to an internet variant of such.

      1. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge

        Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

        I have been accused of information trading in the past, so I will be very brief here.

        Let's say this: Ukraine has proven the weakness of Russia in several different dimensions.

        If you wanto know more, stop reading the internet and join the British army.

        Be a *real* mars-man, as opposed to an internet variant of such. ........ Anonymous Coward

        And if one were to be informed such as is being commented on here is an AWEsome AIdDevelopment already shared with the British Army and trialing and trail-blazing novel and noble revolutionary trade craft for any Securities and Ministries and Departments of Defence requiring Stealthy Internet Networking Services exercising and reinforcing Relatively Anonymous and Practically Autonomous Failsafe Protocols, AC? Would you doubt it and protest all available public evidence suggests that former act was as casting pearls before swine or as casting fertile seeds on stony barren ground?

        Nevertheless, El Reg did advise y'all of those facts though, and very soon after the fact too, so either you missed them or they be/were as pearls before swine or fertile seeds on barren stony ground in your own mind and at that time.

        What think thee now though, now that more information for greater intelligence has been provided?

      2. martinusher Silver badge

        Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

        >Let's say this: Ukraine has proven the weakness of Russia in several different dimensions.

        Wars have a habit of doing that. Even the first Crimea War proved to the Russians that pressing tides of serfs into battle was 'sub optimal'. Later wars showed other failures -- Winter Wars (against Finland) showed problems with communication and intelligence (it didn't help that the Finns were getting inte helpl from the UK), Barbarossa was intelligence, formation and communications (again). There's a pattern. But countries learn from their mistakes -- the US Army's performance when it first got involved in WW2 was Abysmal.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Trollface

      Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

      With every comment, I become more and more convinced the author is Elon. Cryptic and conspiracy oriented.

      Tat said, I enjoy them.One of my guilty pleasures.

      1. First Light

        Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

        Isn't it a guy feeding his comments to an AI and posting the AI's output?

        1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

          Re: The TS/SCI Stuff No One is Going to Tell You Anywhere Near the Whole Truth About.

          Nobody can be told what amanfromMars1 is, you have to experience it for yourself

          1. Pascal Monett Silver badge

            Thank you, but no thanks.

            I have adopted an automatic amanfromMars filter in my brain, and I have kept my sanity thanks to it.

            I will no longer waste neurons trying to process his ramblings.

  2. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    unified interoperable platform to accelerate the pace of important substitution

    Have we unleashed the hordes of Mckinsey on them ?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: unified interoperable platform to accelerate the pace of important substitution

      If we encouraged the big consultancies to go into Russia, the country would be on its knees within 3 months.

      Send all the MBAs there now.

  3. Plest Silver badge

    Fab plants?

    I thought western companies were taking their fabrication expertise out of the CCCP, how they going to manufacture these wonder chips of theirs. Oh yeah, their mates in China and India will probably help by stumping the goods I suppose.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Fab plants?

      The best programmers and technicians that I have worked with for a long time are all Ukrainian, so I expect that the USSR is going to see a problem with this approach but I expect that they still have the old PDP11 clone designs in the cupboards.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Fab plants?

        The Moscovites had a computer design+manufacturing site for many, many years. It even has a dedicated metro station. Site could use a bit of renovation+paint, but I guess it would not be Russian if it were glitzy.

        Russian intelligence lives under a bit of dust and petrol haze.

        In Zelenograd, outside Moscow, they have a limited semiconductor manufacturing capability.

        Next big challenge for Moscow will be to back out of the trap they have stepped into. I am sure they will find a few pretty+intelligent girls to do the trick.

        If not, there is always the Surgeon General with a syringe of sedative.

      2. lotus123

        Re: Fab plants?

        I've worked with the Ukrainian, Belorussian and Russian programmers. They're all excellent. Hard to make any difference between.

    2. Steve Todd

      Re: Fab plants?

      The best that China can currently manage are 90nm lithography machines. India isn’t even that far along. Neither of them are going launch Russia into the stratospheric reaches of the top 500 supercomputer tables.

      1. Mike 16

        Re: Fab plants?

        I'm not convinced that "China" will be limited to old fab plants once Taiwan is "welcomed back".

        1. Steve Todd
          FAIL

          Re: Fab plants?

          Even if China were stupid enough to try to invade Taiwan, and TSMCs fabs survived un-damaged, they still wouldn’t be able to make leading edge steppers. ASML, the only company in the world currently making EUV steppers, is based in Europe and the US of A. The next best manufacturers are Japanese.

          Also these machines need a continuing supply of parts and consumables. The existing machines would stop functioning in a fairly short period of time if taken by China.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If this is as good as their military prowess ....

    I'm scared.

  5. ravenviz Silver badge

    "RSC claimed, have allowed it to "take leading positions in the world..."

    Thank you RSC, stop talking!

  6. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "doubts that such processors can meet the needs of highly demanding applications"

    Doesn't matter, it's all Putin has now.

  7. bleakview

    RISC-V maybe ?

    Russia should go RISC-V instead of x86. If they need x86 they could do AMD AM29000. SMEE will probably be happy to get Russian money and raw materials for developing high yield EUV lithography research.

    1. thames

      Re: RISC-V maybe ?

      RISC-V is probably the future for Russia and quite a few other countries some day, but if you want to buy off the shelf CPUs today with the necessary speed and memory capacity and which are available in large numbers from distributors who aren't going to ask too many questions about what you are going to do with them, then you're talking about x86_64.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      If Computer Guys Had a Clue

      They would know that Moscow develops their own SIMD CPU for years now.

      If computer guys had even more clue, they would also know at least two use cases.

      But alas, most computer guys can only perform snarky comments about the folks who do know. Based on the hype du jour from computer media (Risc V in this case).

      I am a computer guy, too, but I have learned that there is much more out there than we can read in the computer trade magazines.

      Here is a free clue: since the 1950s Russian-speaking peoples have been developing computers and software, but much of this work was considered state secrets, while other nations loudly advertised their products. Some of this work was very advanced.

      1. nintendoeats

        Re: If Computer Guys Had a Clue

        The only scenario that would be relevant would be: people working on advanced computing hardware in secret from 2018 to present. Computing moves at the speed of light, nothing anybody did before then matters very much (no matter how advanced it might have been).

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