Russia's Baikal Chips End Up Going For A MIPS CPU

[phoronix]

Phoronix: Russia's Baikal Chips End Up Going For A MIPS CPU

Last year was news about Russia wanting to design its own processors to be less reliant upon Intel and AMD. The initial "Baikal" processor was expected to be based on ARMv8 but it turns out now that it's a MIPS design...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Russia-Baikal-MIPS-Win

[belal1]

Why would they only create a processor for network applications? Is it because they "know" that intel and AMD processors have some backdoor but the real medium from which the data is transmitted is through the router, so by cutting off the backdoor on the routers side, they disable the any data from being transmitted? Could they not just find a way to cut off the data on the ISP side?

[uid313]

Russia seems confused and not knowing what to do.
They're going with ARM, MIPS or both?
By the way, I believe POWER to be more open than both ARM and MIPS, isn't that so?
RISC-V seems really interesting too.

Also is their Baikal just a rebranded MIPS P5600 processor?

[tuke81]

Is that same firm, which makes shotguns?

[carewolf]

Of course MIPS. I wonder how much is inspired from Patterson & Hennessy's books

I think I have a few state-of-the-art ca. 1997 MIPS design somewhere in my old CS exam project folder.

[gens]

mips is the simplest, most power efficient, processor
a country could easily make a proper one

[kalin]

In my opinion Russia don't have any intention to make anything (as usual). They just try to scare US government with economic threat. Both countries have some issues with the remaining oil and playing some games... thats all

[ossuser]

MIPS is pretty good for routers.

If you control your router, you control your network.

If they can make Linux routers with open/free firmware, I would applaude it.
If they can make desktops and servers with open/free firmware, I would applaude it even more.

Let the games begin.

[edmon]

In my opinion Russia don't have any intention to make anything (as usual). They just try to scare US government with economic threat. Both countries have some issues with the remaining oil and playing some games... thats all

I heard that new russian policy mentioned by Putin is that the big country must produce whatever they can, if it is possible to build MIPS processors they will produce them.

[SXX⁣]

In my opinion Russia don't have any intention to make anything (as usual).

They just want to steal some money as always. If they had different intention that they'll more likely put some funding into Elbrus CPUs that actually developed in Russia and at least provide some level of security because of that.

I heard that new russian policy mentioned by Putin is that the big country must produce whatever they can, if it is possible to build MIPS processors they will produce them.

Err. Russia don't have any manufacturers that able to produce these chips because best they have it's 80nm and even in this case it's doubtful if it's actually work. Of course nobody going to sell them anything for > 80nm.

So they'll be produced in Taiwan or some other country.