In 1965, a Soviet scientist walked into an official's office with a briefcase with a majestic appearance. The briefcase contained the most advanced electronic technology materials at that time. But just 10 minutes later, he walked out with a dejected look . It is not difficult to see that his idea was rejected by the top Soviet leaders.
In fact, it was this rejection that completely widened the gap between the Soviet Union in the electronics field by Western countries. Not only that, Russia, the successor of , also fell into a difficult situation due to the Soviet Union.
But what puzzles the outside world is that with the launch of advanced devices such as S-500 and Su 57 in recent years, Russia seems to have completely betrayed mainstream technology and has explored a unique method.
Today I will talk to you about what technology the Soviet Union gave up at that time? And what is the technology that Russia is studying?
Since the end of World War II , all countries have realized that advanced weapon systems can not only greatly reduce their casualties, but also have geometric multiples of their lethality compared to traditional mechanized equipment. It is also because of this that since 1946, the leader of the two camps, , the Soviet Union and the United States, jointly started the research and development of new technologies.
It is worth noting that although the scientists in the two countries at that time started differently, and they finally focused on the semiconductor field. So, why do they "heroes have similar views"?
It turns out that with the development of the times, Western countries at that time were gradually not satisfied with the progress brought to them by traditional machinery. From the perspective of scientific fields, humans need more and more computing, , so scientists need a machine that can assist them in processing data; and from a military perspective, Western countries that have experienced World War I are not satisfied with the traditional trench warfare , which consumes the opponent's combat methods. Therefore, the functions of the new weapons of must include powerful computing power.
In this way, scientists suddenly discovered that is a material called " electronic tube ". can achieve hundreds of times the computing power of traditional machinery driven by electricity. Because of this, in 1936, the first electronic computer was born in the world of , which also laid the foreshadowing for electronic chips as parts of weapons in the future.
In fact, long before the first electronic computer was released, the Soviet Union built a device called "water flow integrator" with its strong mobilization ability. In short, This device relies on accurate recording of water levels to achieve the purpose of calculating calculus.
From a certain perspective, although different from the traditional Western computers that rely on leverage and gear drives, the computing power of Soviet products is not behind the other party at all. It can be seen from this that the Soviet technology at that time was forward-looking.
However, with the outbreak of World War II, Europe became a convergence point of global technology, so the exploration of electronic computers also stagnated. It was not until 1946 that the United States, whose industry was not hit, took the lead in developing universal electronic computers after recruiting some German scientists.
As the main opponent of the United States, the Soviet Union was naturally unwilling to fall behind, so they also built a general-purpose computer code-named MESM in just 4 years with their strong mobilization ability. According to the data at that time, MESM can perform about 3,000 operations per minute, which can be said to be the most cutting-edge level at that time.
But as time goes by, both the United States and the Soviet Union gradually realized the big problem that computers cannot ignore. Although has a very fast calculation speed, the size of the computer is too large. The weight of MESM even reaches about 25 tons, and the American computer has a whopping 32 tons. Not only that, its power consumption is also very terrifying. Americans who lived near the laboratory at that time said that whenever the computer is running, the lights in their homes will instantly dim.
Faced with such a problem, the handling methods of the United States and the Soviet Union are completely different. In fact, this is one of the reasons why the Soviet Union lags significantly in the electronics field in the future.
It turns out that due to technical limitations, both countries used electronic tubes as the "chip" of computers at that time. However, a major disadvantage of electronic tubes is that they generate a large amount of heat, which makes the computers risk burning all the time when they are running. According to data, in the United States, when worked for 2 hours, half of the time needed to be repaired, and the Soviet Union were similar; on the other hand, the upper limit of computing power of tubes is relatively low, which makes it necessary to stack exponentially in order to improve their efficiency.
It is also because of this that after encountering a bottleneck, the United States developed the " transistor " semiconductor component that we are common today. However, because the Soviet Union has a unique system, it was too difficult to stop a project, so they still put the center of gravity on the electron tube. Of course, in the eyes of the Soviet Union at that time, it was all calculations, and the result was the most important. Therefore, they also conducted special research on miniaturization of electron tubes under the premise of reducing the heat of electron tubes.
In a sense, the Soviet Union gradually realized the shortcomings of electronic tubes from 1948 to 1961. In fact, they were also preparing to "stop the cliff". However, the Cuban missile crisis that broke out in 1962 completely cut off their ideas for developing transistors.
As we all know, this crisis can be said to have put the problem of nuclear weapon on the surface. Under the circumstances at that time, the people of both countries were even ready to fall on their heads at any time. At the same time, such a saying was also circulating within the Soviet Union that has stronger ability to resist nuclear radiation than transistor equipment, and can enable the Soviet Union to maintain its combat effectiveness while suffering a blow.
In fact, from a technological perspective, this statement does make sense. Of course, the view on electronic devices was also determined by the systems of the two countries at that time. For the Soviet Union, the main purpose of electronic computers was for military use, so the energy consumption was higher and it was acceptable if it was inconvenient; , and the United States was more interested in "making money", so their original intention of developing transistors was mainly for the purpose of civil use, and to maximize benefits with .
In 1965, the scientist held the transistor semiconductor material and was preparing to persuade Soviet officials to promote it, but the other party refused on the grounds that it was not suitable for military use. In this way, in the field of electronic computers, the Soviet Union was on the road to miniaturization of electronic tubes. It was not until 1985 that Soviet scientists discovered that if they wanted to further reduce the volume of electronic tubes, the cost of paying was astronomical, and that was why was forced to recognize the importance of transistors.
However, at this time, the United States had already innovated the transistors, and turned it into an integrated circuit, which is the chip we see today. is also because of this. The Soviet Union's rejection of transistors in 1965 also made them lag behind the world's mainstream technology in the electronics field by 20 years. Later, although wanted to "restructure its strength", , due to many external difficulties and internal bureaucracy, it also left the "mess" that could not recover in the electronics field to Russia.
After the collapse of in , Russia could have focused on developing its economy and made a solid foundation in the Soviet Union to "pick up" semiconductor technology. Unfortunately, because Yeltsin believed in the words of American experts and developed shock therapy, for nearly 10 years, Russia has even had a problem with its semiconductors. This is why, after Putin took over, they also lost the qualification to return to the semiconductor industry.
Let us return to the initial question. It is not difficult to see that with the development of the times, Russia has been backward in the semiconductor field for more than 20 years. . In this case, how did they build fifth-generation machine Su57, the best air defense system S-500 and other weapons that can fight back and forth with mainstream advanced equipment?
It turns out that is the credit of Russian scientists for "taking another way". Take the S-500 and the phased array radar in the US THAAD as an example. The mainstream technology in the world currently uses the calculation method of " Fast Fourier Transform ", also known as FFT. Simply put, This method can process a large amount of data and output it quickly.
However, because the semiconductor chip is insufficient, Russia cannot use chips to make FFT operations like the United States. However, and they used an intermediate frequency circuit and combined with an analog filter to build a "chip". Although 's arrangement gives the S-500 a "black, rough and hard" appearance, it does not lag behind Aegis in terms of practical functions and the efficiency of information processing.
And there is information that according to the S-500 arrangement technology, if they replace key components with mainstream semiconductor chips, their size can even be reduced to one-third of that of THAAD in the United States. This is also the reason why Western countries have always wanted to use chips to block Russia's neck in recent years, but they can't get stuck.
It has to be said that in the face of Western sanctions, Russia's way of handling it "no neck" is obviously very wise. From this perspective, the "unique" nature of Russian weapons in is also a solution that has no choice.
