Russian Government Ditching AMD and Intel In Favour Of Its Own ARM Processors

The fallout from the NSA scandal has been overwhelming: initially the NSA and many technology firms in the USA hoped things would just blow over. Many months on and the battle is still raging with NSA-related fallout gracing the headlines every day and being the topic of many international government meetings. The latest development comes from Russia where the Russian government administration is planning to shift away from AMD and Intel CPU based computers. The Russian government publicly announced that it would be creating new Russian-made computer processors dubbed “Baikal”, which is the world’s largest and deepest freshwater lake located in Russia.

The Baikal processors will be based off a 64 bit ARM design and will gradually phase out Intel and AMD processors in the government and state owned systems. The Baikal CPUs are designed by T-Platforms in cooperation with Rostec and Rosnano. The Baikal processors are expected to use the Cortex A57 design and run at 2 GHz, the processors are expected to arrive in 2015. The move by Russia is a gradual one, there is no immediate plan to levy any import bans against Intel/AMD devices neither is there a plan to destroy existing Intel/AMD devices already being used in the public sector. However, the move does signal an increasing global distrust towards U.S technology companies which will continue to be an expensive hindrance until the NSA reforms its ways for good.

Source: Itar-Tass, Via: Phoronix

Image courtesy of ARM