Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “What’s With This WEIRD Russian CPU? (Elbrus)”.
Not long ago, we did an episode on a line of CPUs that were not made by AMD or Intel, but rather by an AMD-backed Chinese joint venture just for the Chinese market.. But these aren’t the only alternative, desktop and server CPUs out there.. Russia also got in on the fund some years back and it appears the company behind it. ( dramatic, whoosh, ) MCST in case you can’t read. Cyrillic is once again producing a line up of CPUs called ( dramatic, whoosh ) Elbrus.. So why are they doing this and how exactly are they different from more traditional offerings. To answer? We collaborated with our friend Doctor Ian Cutress of Anand Tech and we’d like to give him a big thank you and a sloppy kiss for his help.
And after you’ve done watching this video be sure to check out his personal YouTube channel Tech Tech Potato for lots Of cool insights into all things, hardware., So like China, Russia is interested in completely controlling the silicon that goes into its processors.. They want to avoid potential backdoors from chips designed outside the country, namely AMD and Intel, and maybe even put in a few backdoors of their own.. The Russian government has put in orders for lots of Elbrus chips and is even forcing some of their own departments to use them.
But other than being Russia controlled. What make them distinct. Well, probably, the biggest thing is that they’re designed using a VLIW or very long instruction, word architecture..
Don’T you just love how engineers name things Anyways? What this means is that, when you write a program for an Elbrus chip, ( dramatic pop ), you pack several operations into one instruction., Meaning the way that CPU runs is more parallel than your average ( dramatic pop ) x86 core. That’S probably sitting on your desktop or laptop right. Now.. In fact, AMD had some mainstream graphics cards several generations ago that ran on a VLIW like architecture, since parallel processing is more efficient for graphics operations, ( whoosh ), which you can learn more about up here..
This does make an Elbrus CPU more difficult to code, for especially as the hardware has a much more difficult time deciding on its own (, futuristic sound ). What the most efficient order to execute instructions in would be.. This is called (, futuristic, sound, ) out of order processing a key feature of virtually all modern x86 CPUs.. It also means that general performance for something like just running an operating system isn’t as good as what you’d get on a modern, x86 chip..
Although Elbrus can run x86 based OS and programs through a hardware, translation you’re only looking at performance of about 80 % of what you’d get with a comparable x86 processor and that’s best case., But they’re designed this way for a couple. ( dramatic pop ) of reasons. One, a chip – that’s hard to code for ultimately gives Russia more control over its own hardware.. Two Elbrus chips are expected to have lots of uses in government supercomputers to model things like weather and military applications.
Uses that are more specialized, meaning that MCST isn’t as concerned about general performance.. Mcst is also the only major company that makes Elbrus ( dramatic, whoosh, ) motherboards, and it looks like it will remain this way for the foreseeable future., Meaning it’s gon na be very difficult to get your hands on an Elbrus chip. If you live outside of Russia. (, dramatic whoosh ) Inside the country, the Russian Powers RP envisioned the chips becoming widespread in government, medicine and education., ( dramatic whoosh ), And although there are variants for plain old, desktop PCs in these industries, the big focus is on Servers and enterprise level, deployments.
(, dramatic, whoosh, ) And since they’re not trying to really compete with AMD and Intel in the traditional sense, Russia looks like it will be fine with the process nodes being a little behind. Elbrus currently uses the 28 nanometer process with an Eight core model costing around 1700 US dollars.. However, they are looking at coming out with a 16 nanometer 16 core model in 2022, with a seven nanometer 32 core chip, two or three years after that.. Now, if you’ll excuse me, ( dramatic, whoosh ), I’m certainly in the mood for a cold bowl of Borsch., If you’re a student, a professional or just someone who wants to understand the world better check out Brilliant. The website that helps you reach your learning goals by Working just a little bit, every day. Brilliant offers interactive explorations and a mobile app to help you master concepts in math science and computer science.. The courses take complex concepts and break them into bite-sized chunks.. Over time, you’ll be amazed at what you can accomplish..
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