14 DAY TRIAL // Today brings us an interesting piece of news from Russia, with love. The country’s government is looking to ditch all computers running the Intel or AMD platforms and take up instead its domestic ARM-based architecture instead.
As reported by local news, three state-owned Russian companies have taken up a partnership that will produce the so-called “Baikal” platform, which will take advantage of ARM’s 64-bit kernel Cortex A-57 for its base design.
The processors will come equipped with at least eight cores, will be built with 28nm processes and offer speeds up to 2GHz or more.
The report goes on to mention that, when completed, the Baikal platform will be delivered directly to authorities and companies acting under the state’s umbrella. Initially, there are going to be two types of Baikal chips: Baikal M and Baikal M/S.
If you’re wondering about the processors’ names, well, they are in direct reference to Lake Baikal, is one of the deepest fresh water lakes in the world and is, of course, to be found in mother Russia.
The Baikal hardware should start making an appearance in 2015. If you’re curious whether this abolishment will see further extension from governmental agencies to the land of lay men, there is no information to date claiming plans of obliterating all US-made hardware in the country exist.
As mentioned above, Baikal chips are to be installed in computers used by governmental organizations and firms, which are responsible for acquiring 700,000 personal computers and 300,000 servers annually, paying a total of $1.3 / €0.96 billion.
Russia might be looking to cut down some important costs here, but is that all there is to Baikal?
So far, we haven’t been given an official reason for this transition, but as far as speculations go, Russia might be concerned about the security of the sensitive information existing on the computers used in government facilities and Baikal might be the best keep at internalizing what needs to be kept in confinement away from curious eyes
This is the more paranoid theory and Russia might be trying to build its own tech and stop relying on the US-based one (or other foreign vendors for what it’s worth).
But one thing is certain with Russia pulling out of the picture, the US tech giant is going to be experience an important loss in revenue. Since work on the Baikal platform is set to kickstart next year, the two chip makers have some time to re-group and find other business alternatives in an attempt to fill the void.