Earlier this week, Russia’s C news reported About what is called an “anti-sanctions PC”. Called the Mobile Inform Group (MIG) Akinak PC, the new PC is designed to circumvent sanctions and to supply Russian hardware and software to companies looking to serve “import substitution sensitive” organizations. It is said that they use a combination of designs.
But a closer look at the report seems to suggest that the new Akinak PCs are pretty slow, even for the target mixed office and video conferencing user. Additionally, MIG’s supply chain description is less confident about its ability to mass-produce this anti-sanctions PC.
After a year of development, Russia’s hopes for a new general-purpose office computer have arrived in the form of the MIG Akinak Anti-Sanctions PC. This is a Russian-designed Skif (aka Scythian) chips. This 24W 64-bit chip is an Arm-based design featuring 4 Cortex A53 cores and PowerVR’s Series8XE GE8300 GPU technology.
It uses the old A53 core (Arm v8, launched in 2012), so it’s probably surprising to hear that the Skif processor was first sampled many years ago (2019) and was designed for the tablet market. It’s not what you should do. CPU cores run at up to 1.8 GHz. Skif features dual-core DSP, AI acceleration, and hardware encryption capabilities. His batch of 1,000 of these SoCs was produced overseas by an unnamed foreign foundry in July 2021. CNews reports that he only has 10 left from the original batch (a typo?).
As for storage, the MIG Akinak PC comes with a 32 GB or 64 GB eMMC with microSD card support and a SATA II interface for additional storage devices up to 2 TB. Currently, the M.2 expansion connector on the motherboard does not support storage (one port is currently used for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, the other can be used for cellular data), but the developer reserves the option of implementing his M.2. Keep if needed. MIG says the standard RAM is 8 GB of LPDDR4, but it can be upgraded to 64 GB.
A lot of Akinak’s advertised year of development time seems to have been spent on creating domestic motherboards and fully testing the platform. Currently, Basalt SPO’s domestic Linux distribution kit “Alt” is pre-installed and running, but in the future it is planned to support Astra Linux.
Open production questions
We’ve already mentioned concerns about processor production. Additionally, CNews’ report indicates that it cannot guarantee that critical system components such as RAM modules and wireless modules will withstand sanctions, and MIG does not disclose where these components are sourced. Therefore, anti-sanctions against the Akinaq PC seems mostly theoretical at this point.
MIG believes that working with partners, up to 100,000 Akinak computers can be produced annually, provided all conditions are met and there are no unforeseen obstacles. But achieving such goals depends on the “normal availability” of Skif processors, and as the war in Ukraine continues to escalate, things are far from normal in Russia at the moment.
