[New Zhiyuan Introduction] The UK has expanded sanctions on Russia and banned Russian chip factories from using ARM architecture licenses and technical services. According to Russian Businessman, Britain's sanctions have been expanded to the chip field.

Edited by David Hot

[ New Zhiyuan Introduction] The UK has expanded sanctions against Russia and prohibited Russian chip factories from using ARM architecture licenses and technical services. Can the Russian semiconductor industry, which had previously been "unable to get stuck in the neck", still hold on?

European and American "group sanctions" Russia is still continuing.

The new sanctions army this time is the British chip design manufacturer ARM.

According to the Russian Businessman report, the UK's sanctions have been expanded to the chip field.

In addition to freezing the assets of MCST and Baikal Electronics, also prohibits ARM from providing technical services to Russia.

Unless Baikal can find a chip foundry that violates the patent law , or find a new chip patent company to authorize it to open the processor architecture , the famous Russian semiconductor company is likely to face production suspension.

UK updated the sanctions list and measures

htmlOn May 4, the UK announced the latest sanctions list, including Russian processor manufacturers: MCST (producing Elbrus processors) and Baikal Electronics (producing Baikal processors).

The latter uses the license of the ARM processor architecture (Apple , Nvidia, Qualcomm , Samsung and other manufacturers all use this architecture).

The latest sanctions are not just prohibiting Russia from using its processor patents, but also involving freezing the assets of related Russian companies and restricting cooperation with counterparties. Including but not limited to: Prohibiting the provision of technical services and financing, including the provision of grants, loans and contributions to authorized capital.

From the perspective of compliance with international sanctions laws, ARM is prohibited from maintaining any legal relationship with sanctioned companies. Although the new sanctions do not force British companies to revoke their issued intellectual property licenses. However, paying for a new license without the Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation (OFCI) license will not work.

Sources said that Baikal Electronics now has the design and production license for all brand chips before 16nm, while Baikal M2, Baikal L and Baikal S2, which have more advanced processes, are still under development.

After the implementation of this sanction, these chips under development will not be produced due to lack of authorization.

other foundry companies involved in this sanction include UMC , Global Foundries and TSMC. TSMC even refused to produce chips for Russian companies even earlier.

Analysts said that in the face of sanctions, Russian chip manufacturing companies have two possible solutions.

First, find a manufacturer willing to intentionally violate the ARM patent law, and

Second, develop new open RISC/V, MIPS, VLIW architectures.

Although Baikal already has chips that are compatible with MIPS architecture, according to the current situation, it may take two to three years to build a normal chip from scratch, and a lot of additional investment is required.

Based on the current actual situation, Russia may face more difficulties than expected.

The US government started, and chip manufacturers successively imposed sanctions on Russia. Since the outbreak of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the United States and EU have successively imposed sanctions on Russian chip manufacturers earlier this year, denying these companies to enter the business chain of Western companies.

htmlOn December 24, the U.S. government announced sanctions on the Russian semiconductor industry, saying that "it will cut off half of Russia's high-tech products imports, interrupt Russia's economic diversification and its ability to support the military."

Biden administration said that U.S. allies also implemented this ban to block the supply of high-tech buyers such as defense in the aerospace and marine industries, rather than blocking the supply of consumer electronic products.

The first company to follow the steps of the United States and stop working with Russian customers was TSMC.

A few days after the United States issued sanctions, TSMC stated that it would fully implement the new "export controls". The company also said it had a strict compliance process to ensure that the company would strictly implement sanctions against Russia.

The world's two chip giants AMD and Intel have both suspended delivery of products to Russia, which may lead to shortages of Russian computers, servers and other products, resulting in price increases. In addition, Intel China office also notified partners about the prohibition of supplying processors to Russia.

In addition, Global Foundries, a wafer foundry headquartered in New York, USA, also stated that it has begun to comply with sanctions.

Grofond's global head of government affairs and trade Karmi Leiman said the company has a system that can review and block the sale of products exported to Russia.

In order to respond to sanctions, the Russian government proposed a national electronic engineering project in April, planning to spend 3.19 trillion rubles (US$38.4 billion).

However, some experts said that considering the current situation of the global chip and semiconductor industry and the degree of internationalization of the supply chain, even if there is such a scale of investment, it will undoubtedly face great difficulties to independently produce chips from scratch under the pressure of joint sanctions by the United States and Europe.

Reference:

https://techartica.com/access-to-arm-architecture-was-denied-to-baikal-and-elbrus-the-russian-processors/

https://www.bbc.com/zhongwen/simp/chinese-news-56612592

https://www.eet-china.com/news/202202281625.html