Within one year, the applications of the developers of "Elbrus" for state support for the creation of a new chip were rejected three times by the competition commission of the Ministry of Industry and Trade. The amount of the requested subsidy, apparently, is measured in billions.
As [...] CNews, the developer of the Elbrus line of Russian processors, found out, the MCST company failed three times to receive government funding for its new chip.
On the website of the Ministry of Industry and Trade, you can find information that certain ICST applications were consistently rejected at three consecutive ministry competitions for subsidies for "creating an electronic component base and modules". The first of them was announced on August 13, 2021, and the rejection of the application was reported in the tender protocol of September 29.
The second competition was announced on June 16, 2022, the protocol with the refusal is dated August 1. The Ministry announced the third competition on August 8, and the protocol with the refusal of the ICST application was published on September 30. In all cases, the company's applications did not pass the scientific and technical evaluation of the commission. According to a CNews source in the Russian "iron" market, the last time the refusal was explained by the fact that the project does not have enough scope of application.
Since the end of 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Trade has stopped making publicly available data on the names of projects that apply for subsidies and the amount of funds requested for them. However, as three sources told CNews, in all three competitions the MCST submitted applications for the implementation of the same project. Experts' opinions were divided as to what exactly the company intended to develop with the support of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.
According to one of them, the MCST requests funds for the development of ideas embodied in the 16-core processor "Elbrus-16S". According to the information on the company's website, it can be concluded that its development has already been completed, because now "mass production is being prepared in 2022."
The second expert is sure that the MCST aimed not at the development of the Elbrus-16C, which is built on the sixth—generation Elbrus architecture, but at a "lightweight" version of the processor based on the seventh-generation Elbrus architecture - the 32-core Elbrus-32C. Currently, MCST is developing it for use in servers under a contract with Mnpromtorg dated December 17, 2022 for 7.1 billion rubles. The work should be completed no later than December 31, 2026.
As the expert notes, this is an expensive chip for supercomputers and powerful servers, while the MCST is trying to get a subsidy for its version for desktops and microservers.
The third expert from among those interviewed by CNews believes that the MCST could target both the modification of the Elbrus-16C with a video chip and the seventh-generation processor, "but with 16 cores for the desktop."
The ICST declined to comment on its applications for tenders to CNews from the Ministry of Industry and Trade. Representatives of the ministry, in a conversation with CNews, reported that "the MCST project is aimed at the production of processors; so far, unfortunately, it does not meet the requirements.
"The company has been given all explanations and comments on how it needs to be finalized, as a result, the project will be reviewed again," the interlocutors assured CNews. — Selections are conducted constantly, and special attention is paid to microelectronics. Therefore, we are waiting for our colleagues again at the competition."
In connection with the last statement, we note that on October 5, 2022, the Ministry of Industry and Trade announced another competition for subsidies. Applications for it were accepted until 17 o'clock on October 17, 2022. According to one of the editorial sources, the MCST was going to try its luck in this competition for the fourth time.
The Ministry of Industry and Trade conducts the competitions under consideration on the basis of Government Decree No. 1252 of July 24, 2021. According to it, companies can receive subsidies for projects that will be implemented within five years.
The amount of the subsidy is up to 1.5 billion rubles per year. Due to state support, developers will be able to reimburse up to 90% of their costs. Money, in particular, is allowed to be directed to research and development of products, remuneration of employees, equipment and creation of high-tech workplaces, production of prototypes of products and their pilot batches.
According to one of the CNews sources, the amount of funds required for the new long-suffering MCST project is measured in the amount of nine zeros, although it does not exceed the amount of 4 billion rubles.
With regard to MCST chips, it should be noted that among the Russian central processors for mass civilian use (commercially available) they are the only ones built on their own original architecture.
It is called e2k, it was developed at the MCST, whose specialists took as a basis a postsuperscalar EPIC-like architecture, supplementing it with the ideas of SPARC architecture— the successor of RISC architecture.
Other well-known Russian developers of central processors, if we talk about already completed projects, have used foreign licensed MIPS or ARM architectures, that is, they are under threat of sanctions.
Source: CNews
