Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST) has announced it’s now taking orders for its Russian-made microprocessors from domestic computer and server manufacturers. The chip, called Elbrus-4C, was fully designed and developed in MCST’s Moscow labs. It’s claimed to be the most high-tech processor ever built in Russia, and is comparable with Intel Corp’s Core i3 and Intel Core i5 processors.
I’d rather have a processor hand-built by the director of the NSA than one designed and built in Russia.
Say what you like, but at least the Russians know how to build quality stuff made to last, unlike the Chinese that couldn’t build a hole without it collapsing. I have a Russian motorcycle from 1971 that still runs strong and a Russian Rigonda portable TV from the 70’s that still works fine, you won’t get anything from the shops these days that lasts that long!
RUSSIAN METALLURGY
I have a Chinese Type 56-1 (civilian AK-47) rifle I bought in 1985. I’ve fired several 10s of thousands of rounds thru it without a hiccup. One of my sons will be firing it long after I’m gone.
A copy of the ak47. More a testimony of its great design and ease of manufacturing than anything else.
Heheh, one of your sons? I get it. Kudos, sir.
That ‘Russian’ motorcycle is actually a Pre WW2 BMW Model 71.
Quite a bit different actually, you try and exchange certain parts between the two and you’ll find they don’t fit. Your right in that the styling is similar though.
This raises some red flags.
It has a Multi-Putin core and on-die Bolsheviks memory.
Red flags and Red Squares too. (sorry)
Red != Red.
FYI Red Square is actually means Beautiful Square (And Kremlin was shiny white).
Russian’s SA :p
In (somehow) related news:
Top chipmakers in open source MIPS push:
Qualcomm Atheros, Lantiq (part of Intel) and Broadcom have joined the Prpl Foundation. […]
http://fudzilla.com/news/processors/37739-top-chipmakers-in-open-so…
Let’s see where they and the OpenPOWER foundation arrive:
http://openpowerfoundation.org/membership/current-members/
http://www.hpcwire.com/people-watch-2015/7/
At last we’re living times when some people value, more than before, concepts like freeing from vendor lock-in and…
security, THANKS SNOWDEN!
Edited 2015-05-12 16:07 UTC
Sounds like someone stole Intel’s chip plans; again.
That was a typical comment of a western capitalist. It’s made in Russia so it’s evil attitude in 2015?
“Better Red than brain dead”, you know.
It’s someone not willing to buy stuff from a country responsible for the brutal murder of almost 200 of my fellow citizens, and then not aiding in bringing the murderers to face justice in The Hague.
With that logic you should never buy German products too because… OH SHI~
“the Netherlands saw one of the highest levels of collaboration during the Holocaust of any occupied country”
So there is evidence now? That’s a new one.
Until now, it was “trust us, we know it was them, we got the evidence and no, you cannot see it”.
How many country men can say the same things about the US, or many European countries. I know Russia is the recent bogeyman, but apply some reason.
You’re just brainwashed. Look, western MSM forgot this story completely, and investigation has been stopped and secured. Because they have zero evidence of Russian involvement.
Russia was the only country who presented actual intelligence data that perfectly aligns with the info reported by witnesses right after the tragedy.
Edited 2015-05-12 17:20 UTC
Never buy a german car …
Ridiculous comparison. Germany has officially apologised and persecuted its war criminals properly. Meanwhile, the Russian murderers of MH17 are out and about, protected by Russia, living their life in peace.
Until they are delivered to face justice in The Hague, the Russian government is a complete and utter farce.
You go out on a pretty serious limb there.
If, and when it is proven that that flight was downed by Russia, then i will side with you. Until that day, you are quite simply prejudiced.
It’s obvious to anyone with 2 cents it was Russia. Has Russian propaganda extended beyond it’s borders or are you making your naive, or possibly willfully ignorant, statement from within its borders?
Edited 2015-05-14 13:48 UTC
Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Let me take a wild guess … American?
Americans aren’t the only ones with enough sense to realize the obviousness of the situation, but yes I am American.
No, it’s true. Americans aren’t the only ones making assumptions right now …
What can Russia do to bring Valentyn Nalivaichenko and his USA instigators to Hague? From what I know, they are protected by USA, not by Russia.
To those who fail to learn the lessons of history ..
And specially to you Thom (and you can search a ton more if you want):
“http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/colonial-atrocities-explode…
Abraham Lincoln
Lets face it, very few man and way fewer governments can claim high moral standard grounds. Very probably none of the last are active these days.
Saddam Hussein was an abject individual but he was the product of some sort of alliances/compromises inside and between Iraq forces, same can be said about Muamar Kadafi, Bashar al-Assad and many of their ilk. What is really foolish is to think that their elimination would, somehow, fix the problems that are deep inside the societies they live in. As the tragedies that unrolled inside Iraq after US intervention, inside Libia thanks to Europe and USA intervention and once more in Siria show us is that the skew of power balance on many societies may trigger the worst, the darkest side of humans, while some groups try to establish themselves as dominant, and, unluckily, these should be expected as the unfolding of such stupid ingerence. We should let those “leaders” die or their societies reach a point where they can sort out their problems without blood baths, instead of push them to internal genocide with our ignorance and presumption “we know best”.
USA and Europe have blood in their hands. Been optimistic, it is by ignorance, because the other possibility is so much worst. Guilt, anyway.
Irrelevant. I want my own leaders to face justice just as much for the acts committed. I think I’ve made my position on accountability for those in power – whether it be politicians or tech CEOs – very clear on OSNews.
However, we KNOW the Russian separatists in Ukraine shot down MH17 and brutally slaughtered its 300 innocent passengers – every investigation, both from government, independent organisations, and th eairliner itself, have made this 100% clear. If Russia+the “rebels” can’t even deliver these clear-cut murderers to face justice, they have absolutely and utterly zero credibility.
In an ideal world, all these leaders – no matter where from – would face justice. Sadly, that’s not going to happen. However, as a citizen of this country, I have every right to demand that these Russian murderers are delivered to The Hague. The fact that my own crap leaders have bloood on their hands is no excuse to let these murderers go free.
Why should they come to your fking Hague?
You are a typical example of european hypocritical whinner, lecturing the whole world but forgetting to apply the same rules to yourself.
Aren’t you teaching us that nobody is guilty until proven in court?
So have they been proven guilty by court? No – so please shut up and take your plane with you.
Too late. The Russians already took it. Down.
Russia has not ratified the Rome Statute so is not a party to the ICC. Just like the United States, in fact.
Edited 2015-05-13 04:02 UTC
Why are you bringing the U.S. into this? The downing of the plane in Ukraine has absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. Hey, I know it’s the cool thing to hate on them all the time, but give it a rest. It’s getting old real fast.
Besides, you try to bring a point across that is utterly ridiculous. So now, because they’re not a party to the ICC, that makes them not guilty/innocent by default? What kind of bullsh!t thinking is that? I mean, where the f*ck do you people come up with these ignorant ideas?
No, he simply pointed out that the ICC in The Hague has nothing to say in Russia because Russia has not ratified the Rome statute (which recognises the ICC’s jurisdiction in very specific circumstances) – just like the USA has not ratified it. People claiming they should be dragged before the ICC are stepping out of line by enforcing their own laws in a sovereign nation that hasn’t recognised those laws.
However, the abovementioned fact is completely unrelated to the assumption of guilt or innocence. Your entire second paragraph is nothing but a strawman and makes no sense whatsoever.
Edited 2015-05-13 09:21 UTC
The US, Britain and Russia all signed a treaty jointly guaranteeing Ukraine’s indepedence in exchange for giving up its nukes.
Russia’s fixing of elections and subsequent invasion of the Crimea and sending of troops and armored vehicles into Ukraine is a pretty serious violation of that treaty which obvious means beyond nothing to both Britain and the US.
It’s unfortunate that the events have devastated the Ukrainian economy and morale, and allowed for the stupid collatoral damage that would have otherwise probably not have happened.
That being said I suspect the Russian CPU to be much like other russian efforts of the past. Interesting but neither competitive nor compelling.
You’re high, right? Because that (or perhaps a reasonably severe head injury) is the only explanation for you posting this.
Even though I believe that exist people with high grounds on theory, I would like to know how many of them would agree to transfer wealthy to underdeveloped countries that were pillaged throughout history.
And make no mistakes, your generation did benefit from the pillage.
It is easy to scapegoat leaders that fall out of favors in history, it is something entirely different to sacrifice the wealthy that their actions brought while they were on power positions. My bet? Not even in one million years.
Edited 2015-05-12 18:32 UTC
You KNOW huh?
In the age of the internet, everyone knows just as much as the next person.
You KNOW all of the same theories, rumors and accusations as all of us.
You’re pissed off. We get it. SOMEONE did it. We also get that.
It’s a f–king tragedy, and a disgrace for human kind!
But don’t lose your head, man.
The truth will come out. It might surprise you, it might not. Until that day … stay level-headed.
There were Belgians on that plane, too. Our country was (AND IS) in mourning for your loss, just as much as it was for ours.
There is no definite proof either way.
Any judgement you make now is … prejudice.
Edited 2015-05-12 18:22 UTC
In an ideal world, people reporting about technology should have at the very least a passing knowledge of the material they babble about, a modicum of professionalism, and keep their politics/bigotry to themselves. Alas, here you are…
“we KNOW the Russian separatists in Ukraine shot down MH17”
As you do not seem to read any other news accept from western countries like our own country Holland, you might assume that you do not get information that is to be trusted, but only what you are supposed to hear.
Following the reports comming from teh commision that is researching what destroyed MH17 it is pretty clear that they will not give clear answers.
My wife once fled for “the communists” but she now states that the situation in “the western countries” is worse then everything she fled for.
So before you make statements that are plainly stupid, start to inform yourself from more then the one side of the story you are supposed to believe and remember that the dutch are no longer as independent or free as they might want to believe.
I’m not going to back up this claim – but I think I could make quite a good case if came to it that we are very probably “freer to dissent within the EU than the vast majority of other countries or blocks within the world”
Free in the total sense is just too hard to argue, our conscious minds are barely free from our subconscious, we are barely free in face of marketing onslaughts, and politically, governmentally….even the freeest countries are so far from any notion of direct democracy or utopian anarchy it’s not even funny
So, yes we’re freer to dissent in UK. Or Netherlands than Russia.
But would I trust UK spies agencies more or UK chip design corporations (eg Arm spinoffs, CSR, ) more than Russian counterparts ..maybe.. not by much, not by much at all.
I wish the Russian people would start demanding a little more transparency from their own government and institution though.
They seem to favour strong leadership and national pride over transparency and accountability a little too much.
But flip it, so do UK and Scotland apparently
Sorry Scots – I’m with you in spirit at the beginning of your journey to self rule, but it’s still true. You’ve sacrifice the centre left UK government you would have preferred for a dream of national pride and stronger local leadership. It’s a mucky world full of both bigger and smaller self interests
This is ridiculous. Let’s look at the communist countries…North Korea, Cuba, China, etc. No one is going to call them bastions of freedom. Western countries don’t imprison or murder you for opposing political views. No western country has even close to the atrocious human rights records of communist countries. This isn’t to say bad things don’t happen in Western societies but saying they are worse in ANY appreciable way is stupid.
This opinion is based on experience, not just on what one thinks that he/she knows.
So before calling something ridiculous, tell me in what communist countries did you live and in what period. My wife fled in 1972 from the czech republic at the age of 22.
I agree, but I think it’s odd to only be concerned about the Dutch people who were on the plane. Let’s be angry about the death of every single one of the 298 people on board, regardless of nationality.
Edit – I see you acknowledged just that in a subsequent reply.
Edited 2015-05-12 18:02 UTC
you don’t buy stuff from a country, you buy from a corporation
Well, maybe if you didn’t have a leader that is batshit insane control freak people wouldn’t think that.
Jokes about Red are funny, but if you’re interested in what’s coming next, I have some keywords for you:
Conception of Social Security (CSS, COB, KOB), Conception of Public Security
Sufficiently Universal Theory of Ruling (SUTR, DOTU)
And some links:
http://newyouthpolicy.org/en/
http://www.old.vodaspb.ru/english/index.html
http://sutr.org/
http://dotu.ru/lang/en/
http://zakonvremeni.ru/films.html
The perceived balance in Russia is currently between liberals and so called siloviki (one might refer to them as FSB, but that’s misleading, of course; FSB and Kremlin are just grounds for clans). All of them dislike people learning COB, all of them dislike when people remember times of Stalin (the best years are considered 1949-1953 when the war was over and we had own nuclear bombs). So called communists (COB proponents are communists, but often don’t call themselves this way to avoid confusion with marxism, which is legacy compared to COB) have some mindshare. In COB errors of the past were analyzed and new ideas emerged, so the only reason for Russian communist to stay apart from COB is not to know it good enough (or not to be aware of it). Marxists were supported by money, COB proponents do not. Newspapers are also biased, they can show so called opposition event and ignore 10 times bigger NOD or KPE event. Or they can take photos and videos of public event where different political forces were present and then carefully cut off “unwanted” ones even if they were 90% of participants. So called Russian mass media and Russian propaganda are not Russian IMHO, they’re anti-Russian ones. They are only as Russian as people demand them to be, they can’t tell lies to people having so much relatives in Ukraine, but in other situations they are working against Russia. I refuse to call a mass media Russian if it collaborates in hiding NOD, KPE movements, if it does not use COB point of view (e. g. saying that Central Bank must raise refinancing rate to prevent inflation matches liberal point of view, but violates COB point of view). Mass media could have provided 2 points of view to be balanced, but they don’t.
But the information is spreading anyway. I’m using my website with 2500 views every day to spread the information. Other guys do other things they are good in. When COB proponents will gain enough power and mindshare to kick off liberals and siloviki, we could see much more interesting developments, not just Russian CPUs and PCs. Until then, we are happy to have at least what we’ve got.
Russians are known for their outright lies and sloppy propaganda supported by terror. Putin badly needs a success stories and just for that this news is surely inaccurate, possibly misleading and even may be false.
Neither source website nor author inspires confidence.
Why I’m entitled to make such comment ? For 22 years I was experiencing their influence on my country. They called it “brotherly help” while they were controlling, stealing, oppressing, murdering. It wouldn’t be a surprise that pro-russian comments are written by brainwashed or paid pawns.
Only hope its the beginnings off real competition. Besides, if one had a choice I’d rather the FSB than NSA hovered up the data. Far more trustworthy than those world domination crazies.
You’re deluded then.
They are not intended for export, so chances are that you won’t encounter one unless you travel to Russia.
The goals of the Elbrus-4S (not “4C”, the transliteration of the cyrillic letter С is the latin letter S) are
* independence from foreign CPU technology (similar to the Chinese Loongsoon)
*no foreign agency has planted a backdoor or intentional weakness
The fears regarding 2. are certainly not unfounded, cf. the FreeBSD + Intel RNG issue for example.
Edited 2015-05-12 16:22 UTC
Elbrus-4C is known as Elbrus-2S =)
You are fucking ridiculous.
Exactly.
I’ve been reading OSNews for many years, but lately more and more stupid posts like this appear.
On the positive side, there are usually much more intellectual comments are provoked
If this is comparable to the core i3’s, then the chinese have a long way to go. Eventually though, I hope this motivates everyone to get more into the processor game and bring out better CPUs for consumers everywhere. I hope one day this does get sold commercially. Right now, the intel-amd duopoly is getting tiresome. Hopefully Jim Keller brings AMD to a new era of innovation and leadership but it can’t hurt to have some more competitors out there that pushes everyone to make better chips and lower prices.
FUD aside (hi Thom)
I think it will be interesting to see how this develops.
ARM for serious desktops, workstations and servers?
Yes please.
EDIT: or is it sparc?
Please educate me.
EDIT2: Ah nope, seems to be x86 … bummer
Edited 2015-05-12 17:33 UTC
It is unique VLIW arch with hardware-assisted x86 binary translation.
Babayan worked on VLIW-based Elbrus-III in USSR. Unfinished due to USSR crash.
Elbrus ideas were used in Itanium and Transmeta as he claimed.
VLIW is a sort of dead-end for a consumer architecture and Elbrus-4C performance is more comparable to top ARMs.
Also it is ultra expensive (due to limited production). I heard it cost $8000 for a “desktop” version.
8K? Ouch …
Thanks for the knowledge, though!
This is a reply from MCST salesmen reposted to Juick: http://juick.com/Zmeyko/2783623
Desktop 400 000 RUB (yep, nearly $8000)
Server 1 100 000 RUB
And they also have previous generation Monocube-RS for 190 000 RUB. AFAIK its CPU was manufactured in Taiwan, but architecture is the same.
They don’t sell to individuals, legal entities only. Hopefully scale effect will trigger lower prices.
That’s some hardcore pricing right there …
Been studying the architecture for a few days now, and i have to say it has it’s merits for number crunching and such.
The process is lagging behind, but that could improve if these things start selling.
If these come to market at a reasonable price, say, 1K for a complete system, i might be tempted.
I collect a lot of machines with an exotic and/or obsolete architecture. I have SGI machines, HP-PA, alpha, PPC, etc.
I would be very interested to try it out … but that’s just me …
Whether the average joe would like to try it … well … maybe … if the performance was amazing, and it wasn’t too expensive.
Near 4k for the preproduction model…that is 80% of the cost one amiga one x1000 production model.
“Despite the very considerable sum of money, the employee MCST assured that after the “break-in” and the transition to full-fledged mass production of computers pricing necessarily be revised and become more loyal to the buyer.”
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=ru&tl=en&js=y&prev=_t&hl=e…
http://www.3dnews.ru/913874
Hmm. 200k roubles was a rumour and not officially confirmed and then 400k roubles price was announced. Probably it is a price of the server.
€2,975 in stock configuration.
C r a z y
AROS on Mac Pro would be a better deal.
No it is a SPARC chip with a emulation layer on top.
I have been reading about this chip since 2001, and the performance in most floating point tests are almost on par with intel [email protected] (~56gflop vs elbrus ~52gflop) as long as it was using native mode instead of the x86 emulation layer.
Once TMSC starts producing it instead of Mikron Russia the production process will shrink immensely. (Mikron Fab is producing at 90 and 65nm) If they shrink it to the same process as TMSC produces for nvidia you could see a real competitor in that chip. At 65nm it is just too darn hot for it to be competitive in a perf/watt scenario.
You’re likely confused by Elbrus-R500/R1000 – native SPARC CPUs w/o any emulation layers.
If you can read Russian, there is a book about Elbrus architecture.
http://www.mcst.ru/doc/book_121130.pdf
First real Elbrus chip was made in 2007. All previous measurements were based on software model and not worth the attention.
Edited 2015-05-12 19:09 UTC
There is quite some history behind this. Back when Itanium was nearing its release and Transmeta was still alive, MCST was already speaking of their ELBRUS architecture, that would become available (as MCST processor model Elbrus-2000, mostly known as E2K back then) about the time of first Itanium shipments, would outperform top Itanium models and would be able to execute sparc and x86 binaries in parallel. The architecure from their statements looked like Itanium spec with every number mutiplied times two at very least. People from MCST were flooding tech forums with descriptions and “inhouse performance tests,” which were very impressive, although inconsistent.
Then, after a couple of Itanium generations they released the test results of Elbrus-3M, which was said to be stripped down version of that previous model. It sucked big time. AFAIR it never went to production.
Several years later they cancelled that former Elbrus-2000 project, saying that they couldn’t attract enough investments to finalized it. In 2008 they ultimately released it, and it was an OK processor for military applications – good enough to replace Soviet CPUs, although not good enough to compare to low-end models from mainstream CPU vendors. Consequently they released Elbrus-2S processor, which was a pretty small iterative advancement over E2K. After the Ukrainean events they even started to assemble it in Russia under name Elbrus-2SM – previous models were built by TCSM.
Now they release Elbrus-4S. I don’t trust the statement about its performance, as MCST has quite a long record track of deceipt in this regard. Specs show only a subtle improvement over E2S, and I doubt that MCST really did something revolutionary since E2SM release last year.
That said, I’d love to have my hands on ELBRUS-powered (although the word “powered” doesn’t seem to reflect performance capabilities of these CPUs) device. The CPU industry is very close to monoculture with only two or three architectures being more or less mainstream, each dominating its own segments of CPU market. Projects like ELBRUS and Loongsoon are valuable and deserve more then political comments. If only there was a nutral, trustworthy body that would design and manufacture the chips…
Too bad i already commented, man. Can’t upvote no more.
Great post! Thanks!
You’re skipping a big chunk of history here.
After Babayan abandoned the project and was bought by Intel with his team, almost all that he left was software simulator and compiler in-progress.
So CPU team was refreshed with new passionate guys who actually built this thing known as ÐльбруÑ(1891Ð’Ðœ4Я).
Specs show only a subtle improvement over E2S
There are a lot of changes.
ÐльбруÑ-2C featured DSP cores Elcore-09 made by Moscow company Elvis. ÐльбруÑ-4C(2S) has no such cores. Caches, memory subsystem were heavily upgraded.
For example 38.4GB/s (theoretical, though) memory bandwidth is on par with Intel Core i7-4770K.
Edited 2015-05-12 18:40 UTC
Which is not as impressive once you know that this bandwidth is shared among more parallel pipelines then Core i7 has. And again, this figure comes from MCST, whose track record is not particularily inspiring.
Core-i7 has 4-5x frequency advantage and 256-bit vector unit.
It is a bandwidth limit theoretically possible with current memory interface capabilities. Such as operating frequency and interface width. In this particular case – triple channel of DDR3-1600.
Whether the cores can cause such a traffic or not is irrelevant.
Nicely abridged and analyzed, thanks !
Would like to upvote you too, but the ridiculous rules here make this impossible.
russia has the highest evil-per-power quotient on earth. if thom wants to boycott their shitty product because of this, I support him
Yeah ! Lets be one more lost soul sold on the idea that “we are good, those that don’t share with us .. a) a country; b) a society organization; c) a religion; .. z^n) [insert your own prejudice here] – are totally and definitively evil !”.
Would be funny if it was not tragic.
We are not good. Quite the opposite. Heck, there really isn’t an “us” or “them”.
This is about the specific people who fired the rocket that murdered 300 innocent people, thereby committing a very, very serious war crime, and the leaders responsible for this war crime (Putin, the rebel leaders who even gloated about the slaughter on social media). This is not about the Russian people, who can’t help they have a murderous dictator for a “president” – much in the same way I can’t help the fact that my leaders commit horrible crimes all the time too.
This really isn’t complicated. If you want justice to prevail, than the Russian rebel leader in Ukraine, as well as Putin, should face justice for their war crime at the ICC. Let the courts figure out if they, indeed, are guilty of this crime.
Anyone looking at the fuckton of evidence and all the reports already knows they are guilty, of course, but that means fuck-all until a court determines it.
First and foremost, it was sarcasm by my side but, I guess, you knew it.
And about justice, we in “western civilization” would run out of leaders if your claim for justice would be honored and enforced. Not a bad thing, at all, though.
Anyway, I stand for what I said before, it is easy to talk about high grounds when there is no sacrifice by ourselves, even though we collected benefits from someone else crap acts.
Edited 2015-05-12 19:54 UTC
“gloated”: 5000+ civilians dead, 10000+ injured. 2.5 millions Ukrainians are hiding in Russia (as reported).
Amnesty Inc and OSCE has numerous reports on mass executions. But you prefer to ignore it.
http://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/154916
Recently OSCE recorded 271 explosions in just 4 hours during ceasefire!
Edited 2015-05-12 20:33 UTC
Russian rebels in Ukraine started this war, pushed on by Putin. They could’ve gone the route of, say, Scotland, and go the democratic route. Instead, they opted for violence and intimidation.
It would be nice if, for once, the Putin apologists looked at their own leaders instead of just pointing fingers at others. I have no qualms about making it very clear that most (if not all) western leaders, including my own, are shitbags, and most likely all deserve to be in prison for the things they do.
Would you say the same about Putin? Why are you contuously telling me about the horrible things western leaders do, when I have already stated, numerous times, that I agree with you?
Russian rebels murder 300 innocent people, and instead of Putin and the rebel leaders doing whatever they can and give unfettered access to independent investigators, they close off the area, block anyone from entering, quickly transport all the evidence to Russia, and hinder investigations every step of the way.
If Dutch militants shot down a Russian plane full of innocent Russian civilians, I’d be demanding my government step down, arrest and punish the ones responsible. In fact, I can guarantee you my government would step down, because that’s how a proper democracy works (our failure in Srebrenica forced our government to step down, for instance).
Why are you not demanding anything from your leaders? Why are you not out on the barricades, demanding full cooperation from the Kremlin?
Oh right – if you raise your voice vs. Putin, you “disappear”.
Thom,
Every history event has many view sides, some wrong, some less wrong.
I have no empathy to people involved in the coup that followed the protests (Europe and USA supporting it because of their own shady reasons), nor to Yanukovych, or Poroshenko, or Russia and even less to Ukrainian nationalists and their hateful acts that followed (“Google” about it). The unrolling events resulted on a huge sacrifice of life of innocents in Ukraine, that is the only part we are sure about.
Even though it is on a smaller scale, but with no less horrific outcome however, the result retain some similarities with what happened on Iraq, Libia, Siria and other places, i.e., on the destruction of power balance, and we should remember that Yanukovych rise to presidency was a consequence of an internal power game, it is not unreasonable to expect outraged behavior from forces that were part of the game.
Had Europe pressed to “lets get ready for the new cicle of elections that are coming and be sure to elect someone more aligned to ‘progress'” Ukraine would have, perhaps, saved many lives and not give the excuse Russians wanted to seize Crimea. Unluckily, that was not what happened.
History just keep repeating itself while we put our own interests and emotions to play instead of learn and be rationale. I guess, it will be always this way, unfortunately.
Edited 2015-05-12 22:26 UTC
Do not read MSM =)
Russia has reputation of police state with enormous corruption and certainly it is justified, but most that is written in MSM toilet papers are utter BS.
In reality Putin is too soft with certain opposition leaders (those who are “oppressed” under MSM microscope) and allow them to break all the rules, while pro-Russia patriotic people got multi-year prison sentences for harmless public actions.
Hope you guys will excuse me for bringing this political shit. It was directed personally to Thom, as he became obsessed with hate to my beloved country.
I’m reading this site and Thom since 2005, and his opinion and visions undoubtedly influenced mine.
In RL, if opinion of someone you know is based on incomplete or even wrong information you could be too concerned about it.
Thom, if you would like to talk more, you know my e-mail 🙂
Edited 2015-05-13 04:47 UTC
You neglect to mention the US took responsibility for the accident and compensated the families. A far cry from the MH17 incident.
I was always amused to see people identifying themselves with countries. I guess in Ancient times slaves identified themselves with their masters as well.
Great, I can just imagine all of the unique features that will be listed in the sales materials:
– integrated hardware rootkit to ensure that all PCs using the processor are automatically enlisted in a botnet for sending “Canadian pharmacy” spam
– co-processor to automatically calculate the amount that spammers need to pay in bribes to Russian officials to avoid prosecution and/or “encourage” prosecution of competing pharma-spammers
– integrated GPS to ensure that spam is never sent to computers in Russia (since that’s just about the only way to get prosecuted for spamming there)
– hardware-acceleration of vulnerability scanner/SQL injection/comment & contact-form spamming scripts
– built-in detection & reporting of the production or viewing of illegal memes (AKA memes that mock Russian officials), or any signs of homosexuality
– hand-assembled by only the most skilled North Korean slave laborers
Edited 2015-05-12 20:21 UTC
Hum, you forgot about:
– hardware assisted encryption to better covert of proxy hacking and exploiting;
– high throughout IO to help DOS attacks;
– CPU virtualization support to allow for transparent (to the poor user) coexistence of master OS monitor that knows everything with the poor guy virtualized and monitored OS.
Unexcusable !
Edited 2015-05-12 21:19 UTC
…probably better that all the not skilled slave labour force that usa gets from their prisons for assembly the electronics of their airplanes.
Ah, I see – you mindlessly assume that anyone critical of Russia must be an American? Awwwwwwww, that’s just adorable – pathetically simple-minded, knee-jerk jingoism, but adorable nonetheless.
It’s also cute that you seem think that’s going to offend me somehow. Sorry, son – but even IF your lazy assumption was correct (hint: it isn’t), you would have to do a HELL of a lot better than “Durrrrrrrrr, I know you are, but what am I?”
I can make a point related to the diferences between USA and Russia without telling in any part that you must neither north american or russian, try to read again.
“Durrrrrrrrr, I know you are, but what am I?”
You’re a fool.
Seriously, that’s the best you can come up with? This whole “wit” thing really isn’t your forte, is it, son? Well, I guess I should at least be impressed that you managed not to write “Your a fool.”
Edited 2015-05-14 13:10 UTC
Integrated GLONASS, not GPS !
Ignore the politics. None our countries have clean hands.
No, it is not a copy of Intel. The Elbrus 1 was the processor in a Russian supercomputer built in the early 1970s. Some of the development team have been involved sine the 1950s!
It got some publicity back in 1999 when the company tried to get western investment to build the chip. That never worked out and they ended up building a low power version sometime in the mid 2000s.
Part of the company was bought out by Intel at one point but this appears to have been only the software side. The processor went to MCST and they’ve been developing it ever since.
The architecture is closest to Transmeta or Itanium which are both seem to have been inspired by Elbrus in the early 90s.
It’s nothing like a modern out-of-order desktop or mobile chip.
It’s an up to 23 wide VLIW processor with a fairly low clock rate.
It won’t be that good on scalar or serial code (their own benchmarks show this) but that’s missing the point. It’s designed to be a floating point monster – and can probably do it, despite the low end silicon process.
BTW I once wrote articles for OSNews. The first one in 2002 mentioned Elbrus.
VLIW-based Elbrus III is not related to two-issue out-of-order Elbrus1/2 with register renaming and speculative execution.
They were designed by different architects.
No, of course not – but when it comes to technology and the internet, some country’s hands are a hell of lot dirtier than others. In both publicly-available stats & my own experience, Russia is one of the largest sources of malicious traffic polluting the internet – second only to China. And that’s nothing new, it’s been widely know for at least 15 years now that one of the simplest & most effective ways to secure a server or network is to just block traffic from all IP ranges in Russia & China.*
It’s painfully obvious that the people beating the cultural relativity/false equivalence/”but… but… NSA!!!” drum have never had to manage a publicly-accessible server & deal with daily, near-DDoS levels of failed login attempts – almost all from Russian (or Ukrainian) IP addresses.
*The best thing about that practice is that it’s an extremely effective “moron-detection” method. A mere mention of it has the same effect as waving a red flag in a bull’s face – at least to people who are stupid enough to assume that there could never be purely practical reasons for blocking traffic by country. It happens so reliably, it’s practically Pavlovian.
Edited 2015-05-14 15:04 UTC
To Thom and his bespoke processor… can we please focus on the Elbrus’ technical merit. Its very cool to see alternative CPU designs like this appearing.
Now Russia needs to develop a microkernel operating system.
Rodina-Mat’ zobjot~ (Mother Russia calls~)
Great news, available options are always welcome. Russia, China, USA, Europe, who cares where they come from.
As to the first post about Russian motorcycles, the Ural is an example. But, I have a Chinese bike that has gone over a 150000 km and still purrs like a kitten.
Quality isn’t tied to national origin,
Interesting, but the NSA hasn’t exactly gained my trust either.
I’d rather use a cpu created by the nsa with the purpose of spying on me than use a rusisian one, just like the comment said.
On the same note: if snowden had stayed in USA when he whistleblew, he’d be a great guy. Defecting and trying to play it out as his only option not only made him a chicken, but also a traitor. This is concerning the mention on an earlier comment.
Let’s say that, hypothetically, some company were to cover up a death they were responsible for, and later that fact was revealed by someone working at said company. By your reasoning, if the whistleblower violated an NDA, then he would be the one at fault – rather than the people responsible for the (much more serious) crime that he reported.
I agree with the statement “I’d rather have a processor hand-built by the director of the NSA than one designed and built in Russia.” Of course I am American so I am biased but the Russian government makes the US look like a libertarian utopia in comparison.