Russia has managed to obtain a small batch of 48-core Baikal-S processors aimed at servers and storage devices, reports CNews citing Vasily Shpak, Deputy Minister of Industry. The batch of 1,000 units will be distributed among developers and makers of servers, which will design products around these processor, something that suggests that more CPUs are incoming. The only question is from where did Russia-based Baikal Electronics go them?
After Russia started full-scale war against Ukraine in February, 2022, Taiwanese authorities imposed strict export controls on processors that can be shipped to Russia and Belarus. As a result, Russian entities like Baikal Electronics can only procure 32-bit CPUs operating at frequencies of up to 25 MHz and offering performance of up to 5 GFLOPS from Taiwan companies, which pretty much excludes any modern technology.
