The price of a domestic CPU designed by a Russian company has reportedly doubled due to high demand and logistics complexity Kommersant. Notably, Baikal Electronics claims its partners are selling leftovers from their inventory, while some local hardware makers say the chips are still in production and cost is only implying that the
Prices for CPUs designed by Baikal Electronics and MCST have risen significantly since the beginning of the year, according to Russian PC supply chain sources quoted by Kommersant. The soaring prices were caused by a combination of increased demand for these chips by Russian PC, server and storage system makers and the shift of production to new factories, the report said.
“The production of Russian chips in foreign factories has become more complicated, leading to longer logistics chains and, as a result, higher costs for the final components,” said server and storage producer Norsi Trans. CEO Sergei Ovchinnikov said. system. He also said that domestic CPU prices have effectively doubled since the beginning of the year.
After Russia launched an all-out war with Ukraine on February 24, 2022, major CPU development companies (AMD and Intel) left the country, and Taiwanese authorities sent advanced chips made by local foundries to Russia and Belarus. prohibited the export of Meanwhile, Norsi-Trans’s CEO claims that at least one foundry is still producing chips for Russian developers. It is unclear if the manufacturer is located outside Taiwan or if a Taiwanese chipmaker produces the chips and supplies them to a third country rather than Russia. There is no confirmation of which foundries actually made the Baikal and MCST chips.
But the price of Russian chips has certainly increased. Baikal Electronics’ dual-core BE-T1000 P5600 SOC (system-on-chip) based on the MIPS32r5 architecture was priced at 3,990 rubles in 2018. That price has remained largely unchanged until this year. The SoC is currently priced at 8,900 rubles. chip dip Store count has increased 123% since 2018.
A Baikal Electronics representative told Business Daily that the price hike was related to the sale of old inventory, which the company has no control over. A Baikal spokesperson was quoted as saying, “In such circumstances, pricing is entirely at the partner’s discretion and is subject to the partner’s jurisdiction.” MCST declined to comment, as did Chip Dip.
Maxim Koposov, CEO of Promobit (known for PCs, servers and storage subsystems marketed under the Bitblaze brand) has reportedly said that all chips from Baikal Electronics and MCST have recently become expensive. increase. “More and more companies are launching products based on Russian processors,” he said, citing increased demand and limited supply. On the other hand, most of these systems cannot be mass-produced due to lack of chips. As a result, his PC and server makers in Russia now rely mostly on gray imports for their x86 processors.
“For example, we released a line of x86-based products,” Koposov said. “No one wants to work at a loss or at breakeven, especially given the possibility that products based on foreign parts will be registered in the register of the Ministry of Industry and Trade.”
