Thursday, September 27, 2018

For strategic technological sovereignty as well as national security, Russia needs at least a few domestically-designed microprocessors

Russia has been historically weak in semiconductors generally and microprocessors in particular [though the situation in software is somewhat better]. Near-total dependence on America's Intel, AMD, Qualcomm, NVIDIA, etc., is not good at all for the nation. In the long term, Russia needs at least one decent-sized functional foundry inside its borders which both churns out domestically-designed chips at a medium pace, and also manufactures chips with classified / secret capabilities [you can't ask Samsung or TSMC to build these]. In the short term though, Russia urgently needs a fabless chip designer that designs chips based on both x86 and ARM architectures [possibly one SPARC and one MIPS chip too].

The reasons for this are both development of domestic semiconductor industry and also national security. I also mention, what I call "strategic technological sovereignty" as another important reason. As is stopping and possibly reversing brain drain of Russian talent to the West. For government needs as well as mission-critical tasks, only Russia's self-designed processors should be used, and not Intel's or AMD's.

China's Huawei's HiSilicon is such an excellent example of what Russia needs. It designs chips based on standard ARM architectures, and doesn't alter these designs [unlike Qualcomm and Samsung]. This keeps things easy and simple and manageable. China doesn't have to depend on Qualcomm for SoCs for mobile phones. Russia too needs a domestic chip designer. Sufficient domestic demand can be artificially created for this company by making sure that all government computers, smartphones, location devices, laptops, tablets, servers, etc., use chips designed by this company. Like a mutual funds tracks an index, different Russian chips should be pegged to specific Western chips [as if these Western chips were targets to be achieved or beaten], and attempt should be made to at least equal the Western chips in terms of price, durability/quality/reliability and specifications. Over time, the Russian public can be encouraged / nudged to prefer domestic chips rather than US-designed ones, particularly when Russian designs become broadly equivalent or superior to their Western brethren.

Update [9-Oct-18]: I just read this very long and fascinating article on Bloomberg, and realized how well-timed my blog post was. This article strongly reinforces the idea that Russia needs its own chips, its own code, and its own men working on its own machines. No one else can be trusted.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

When China acquires Taiwan, it will get access to many high-end technologies that it has been trying for a long time to gain [COMPACTIDEA]

By acquiring Taiwan, China will instantly get ownership of such gems as TSMC, MediaTek, Foxconn, as well as several dozen well-known and established computer hardware companies with large product lines and significant sales. The Made in China 2025 plan will get a significant boost from inclusion of Taiwanese companies, their research, their existing and prospective technologies, sales networks, and their partnerships, coming under the ownership and control of Beijing. Ownership of Taiwan is critical to China's 2025 plans specifically, and China's technological self-dependence more generally.

Saturday, September 08, 2018

In its relationship with America, India is behaving like that poor man who feels rich, elevated and important when dealing with a high-society person

I feel quite sad when I see multiple news stories these days showing how India is slowly drifting towards America, leaving our trusted friends - Russia and Iran - behind. Among other harmful steps of the Modi government, this one stands among the top worst. India doesn't realize that for USA specifically and Westerners generally, India is merely another pawn on the chessboard through which it wants to maintain and extend its global hegemony. It's very sad that India is foolishly "excited" to be working with, and to be seen working with the Americans. As if this somehow "elevates" India to the level of a more superior country than India is.