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2022
Inclusion in the industrial competence center for the replacement of foreign industry products "Electronics and Microelectronics"
The Ministry of Industry and Trade of Russia has included the Mephius full-cycle microelectronics Design Center, created on the basis of NRNU MEPhI, as part of the industrial competence center for replacing foreign industry products "Electronics and Microelectronics." Mephius announced this on August 2, 2022.
Earlier it became known that, on behalf of the Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin , 16 industry committees on key sectors industries and the social sphere were formed. In particular, these are,, mechanical engineering metallurgy electronics and microelectronics,,,,. communication education transport ecology The committees oversee 35 industrial competence centers, on the site of which priority areas, types and classes of the replaced will be determined ON and technical specifications for vendors for the development of specific products for the needs of domestic enterprises will be formed.
In total, more than 37 billion rubles have been allocated from the budget to co-finance the creation and implementation of new domestic software and the replacement of foreign products until 2024.
 | The volume of co-financing for each of the projects will be about 80%. After the development, we will introduce software for the enterprises of the industry for whose TA they were created, - said Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Chernyshenko. |  |
Also, he noted, the product being developed should be not only universal, but also export-oriented. More than 2/3 of the revenue of vendors is expected to be received in foreign markets. And the government intends to see the first practical results at domestic enterprises in 2024.
Vladislav Samoilov, deputy director of the Mephius design center, believes that its inclusion in the competence center will allow, together with the Russian IT the companies (also part of the center), to launch effective joint work to replace industry and system-wide foreign solutions with Russian software products and hardware systems.
Plans to create a national competence center RISC-V
At the Mephius full-cycle microelectronics design center, which is to be launched on the basis of NRNU MEPhI in September 2022, it is planned to create a national competence center for the RISC-V processor architecture. This was announced at the signing of an agreement with IT companies on the creation of a design center by its deputy director Vladislav Samoilov. Read more here.
Design Center Agreement
On June 8, at the National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (NRNU MEPhI), a cooperation agreement was signed between the university and 11 IT companies, involving the creation of a full-cycle microelectronics design center. At the initial stage, in addition to NRNU MEPhI, its participants will be the Institute for System Programming named after V.P. Ivannikova RAS (ISP RAS), MCST, Baikal Electronics, Hi-Tech, Astra Linux GC Companies, Eremex, KEAZ, TimTech (Optimizing Technologies brand), Kraft, Aerodisk and VedaProject.
The center, for which the name Mephius is chosen, will be engaged in the research, development and commercialization of products and technologies in the field of microelectronics, trusted platform solutions and next-generation hyperconverged systems, integration of solutions, as well as training. It will include laboratories created jointly with industrial partners and authorized training centers of participating companies. The launch is scheduled for September 2022.
The center will be formed as a structural unit of NRNU MEPhI, it is not planned to create a separate legal entity for it. The director of the design center was Valentin Klimov, acting Director of the Institute of Intelligent Cyber Systems (IIX) of the NRNU MEPhI, and the deputy director was his colleague at the IIX Vladislav Samoilov.
The prerequisite for the creation of a new division is that the demand for advanced technologies and design services for microelectronics and full-cycle system software is currently growing in Russia. And in view of Western sanctions against Russia against the background of a special operation in Ukraine, access to many technologies, including in the field of microelectronics, has become very limited.
Critical microelectronics technologies that drive demand are primarily: IP blocks, including microprocessor cores; computer-aided design tools for microprocessors and IP-units (CAD of system, logical, physical levels); compilers and SDKs; architectural solutions for microprocessors.
In this regard, among the scientific areas that are planned to be primarily developed in the Mephius center are modern IP block architectures, promising logic models, compatibility technologies, SmartSSD technologies for large storage, machine learning algorithms for automatic design of processor cores, etc.
Vladislav Samoilov, deputy director of the design center, notes that the latter, in particular, is actively developing Google: machine learning and AI technologies in general can quickly and efficiently create new types of microprocessors themselves.
As for the commercialization of the design center, it is planned to be carried out through custom development/integration, paid training and advanced training courses, paid technological consulting/services, as well as the attraction of grants and subsidies. The creation of a marketplace for the center, where its developments and services will be offered, is also being considered.
At the signing of the agreement, data were given that in 2025 the center expects to reach annual revenue of 500 million rubles. This indicator takes into account, among other things, grants from the state that can be received.
Vladislav Samoilov told TAdviser that by June 17 it is planned to write the first application for a grant for the creation of laboratories with industrial partners in IP blocks, CAD, etc.
Vladislav Samoilov also told TAdviser that one of the customer companies with which the design center plans to work on joint projects is Rosatom. With him, one of the promising areas is work in the field of microcontrollers.
For research and development, both NRNU MEPhI and its partners have an extensive technological reserve and a strong personnel base, which includes, among other things, immigrants from Intel. Such, for example, work at TimTech, one of the participants in the new design center, one of the visitors to the event told TAdviser. In his opinion, their examination will help to replace, among other things, some "drop-out" IP blocks due to sanctions.
At the same time, at the moment there is an acute issue with the production of domestic microelectronic products due to the blocking of access to foreign production sites amid sanctions. MEPhI does not have its own production factory at the design center at NRNU.
Key Russian processor developers continue to work on solving the difficult production issue. Market players are extremely reluctant to spread about the options under consideration, because there is a risk that some workarounds could be quickly blocked if information about them becomes publicly available.
However, for example, MCST, the developer of Elbrus processors, at the end of May announced plans to transfer their production from Taiwan to the Russian Micron factory. The [1]. Now the corresponding "roadmap" is being worked out.
Micron currently makes it possible to produce processors using 90 nm technology. This is a significant lag behind what world leaders can offer. Until the latest sanctions, Elbrus processors were produced using more modern technologies, and a "rollback" of processors for production using a 90nm process will mean a loss of performance. But still, this is at least some kind of local production opportunity with the prospect of further development.
The representative of the ICST Konstantin Trushkin at the signing of the agreement noted that Russian factories, in principle, are able to supply microcircuits suitable for a wide market. However, this requires work on software: only working on the entire technology stack, due to innovative architectural approaches, you can try to get performance that allows you to satisfy even the most demanding customers, he says.
In addition to the already signed IT companies, new organizations are expected to join the design center by the end of the year. Vladislav Samoilov said that participation is being worked out with such organizations as, for example, the STC "Module" and the blockchain operator "Distributed Register Systems."
Nikolai Kargin, director of the Institute of Nanotechnology in Electronics, Spintronics and Photonics, also part of the university, noted that the first department of microelectronics was created in the USSR in 1961 on the basis of MEPhI: "microelectronics in the country began in MEPhI."
The Institute of Nanotechnology in Electronics, Spintronics and Photonics has a through-cycle design center that ensures process continuity from basic research to finished instruments. His areas of work are not silicon electronics, Nikolai Kargin specified, but over time the institute came to the conclusion that the processes that their center deals with are related to silicon technologies. The developed technological base and personnel potential can be used for the created Mephius design center. This should be a new stage of development for NRNU MEPhI.
Notes
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