The sanctions imposed on Russia as a result of its invasion of Ukraine are unprecedented. In general, the response of the international community has been an almost unanimous condemnationand this has made it possible for our neighbor to the east to lose access to very important resources, including the semiconductors.
Let’s be honest, semiconductors have become one of the pillars of modern society, and making a country unable to access them It is a sentence to anchor it in the past. You only have to think about all the things that use semiconductors today to understand it, although it is true that there is a “black” market of older chips that allow countries subject to serious sanctions to continue accessing “obsolete” but functional technology .
In the case of Russia, the sanctions have had a full impact in this regard, which means that the main semiconductor manufacturers they have stopped supplying chips both to that country and to third parties that supply Russia. In short, it is a total veto that will prevent the country from accessing the semiconductor sector, something that will obviously end up having a huge impact on its economy and its technological development.
To try to counteract it, the Russian government has confirmed a preliminary plan that will involve the investment of 3.19 trillion rubles to boost the local semiconductor industry, which is equivalent to about 38.3 billion dollars. This money will be distributed towards the development of local semiconductor manufacturing technologies, the development of national chips, the commercialization of said chips and the training of local talent.
According to the source of this information, Russia wants to boost local chip manufacturing by the end of this year using the 90nm nodean obsolete technology, so much so that it was used in NVIDIA’s GeForce 7900 GT back in 2006and also on the Xbox 360 GPU. In 2030, they hope to reach 28 nm, a node that was a leader back in 2011. On the other hand, Russia also plans to launch a program focused on the reverse engineering of Western electronics that could be approved this April.
It is a strategy that seems to make sense until we ask ourselves Where is Russia going to get the machinery and equipment?necessary to be able to manufacture their own chips in said processes, especially taking into account the seriousness of the sanctions that have been imposed and the cost of said equipment.
