Life has gone rather pear shaped in Russia these days. In reaction to their dispute with Ukraine, many countries including the US have imposed sanctions against the nation. The Russians in turn have reacted with the usual zeal you would expect from a country whose president rides bears and models for paparazzi. He has openly threatened to “disrupt” GPS navigation until the sanctions are lifted. This has all lead to Russia having to look for internal solutions to technology problems that it used to be able to solve externally. Need a computer? Live in Russia? Well you might just be using Baikal in the near future.
Baikal is the name given to the CPU that Russian company T-Platforms is manufacturing to be placed in Russian built systems. They are doing this rather than purchasing any imperialist CPUs produced by capitalist conglomerates AMD and Intel. Better yet, it’s based on the ARM architecture (a Cortex A57 design to be exact), meaning the OS of choice will probably have to be Linux-based. Might we suggest Red Hat?
Although the chips will be made by a domestic maker, the “Western” design will exist for now. At least until they come up with something home brewed for the ultimate “people’s computer”. Looks like the Mac vs PC Cold War may finally come to an end in Russia.
Unsurprisingly, we don’t have any more details on what the final product will look like, so I’ll leave it to the hosts of Top Gear to highlight some of the other great things communism has produced. It may provide some theories.