Re: Will the real instruction set please stand up?
According to Wikipedia, this is either the same organization as made the mainframes or a descendent of it. They made several lines of computers. The originals had some similarities to Borroughs mainframes, but they were independent designs, not copies. In the 1980s, they switched to a VLIW architecture. This current chip seems to be a descendent of that.
They also made a separate line of products using the SPARC architecture. Something that isn't clear is whether this new chip somehow incorporates the SPARC instruction set as well as the Elbrus VLIW one, or whether that is just garbled reporting mixing up the two product lines. I suspect it's the latter.
Their chips are (according to Wikipedia) used in the "space program, nuclear weapons research, and defence systems". Now you know why the Russians use them. The Americans won't sell chips to them for use on those markets.
The model of chip that comes out this year is the 8S, which is 8 cores, 1.3 GHz, and built on 28 nm. It sounds pretty respectable even by today's standards.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
