Baikal Electronics, the developer of domestic Baikal processors, is expanding its experiment to promote their chips in Russia. The company began testing this technological process at the capacities of the Russian GS Group holding in the Kaliningrad region in November 2021, and now it will be launching it at the capacities of Milandra and Micron in Zelenograd (Moscow district), as reported by Vedomosti with reference to manufacturing companies of electronic products.
Until February 24, 2022, Baikal Electronics had been ordering the production of chips, including cores, from the Taiwanese giant TSMC. In 2021, the company released 130 thousand processors and planned to increase the annual volume to up to 600 thousand by 2025. However, due to the sanctions imposed against Russian companies, TSMC stopped cooperation, resulting in the non-shipment of the 300 thousand Baikal processors already produced in 2022 to Russia.
In Russia, only a few companies such as GS NanOTECH, the Zelenograd Nanotechnology Center, and the Voronezh Plant of Semiconductor Devices are involved in the processing of microelectronics cores. Previously, “Milandra” focused on hulling microcontrollers and peripheral microcircuits only.
Vice President of GS Group production, Fedor Boyarkov, confirmed to Vedomosti that the Baikal chips experiment is ongoing. However, in the “Element” group, which owns “Micron,” they declined to comment on the Baikal experiment. Representatives of “Milandra” did not respond to the publication’s request for comment.
Despite the ongoing experiment, sources indicate that more than half of the chip batches are defective. The reasons for this include inadequate configuration of the equipment at the enterprises and insufficient competencies of the personnel involved in the chip production process.
Andrei Evdokimov, the General Director of Baikal Electronics, mentioned that while it is challenging to discuss the successes of large-scale industrial assembly, there is reason for cautious optimism. Sergey Ovchinnikov, the general director of Norsi-Trans server manufacturer, described production defects as a normal occurrence when starting a new type of production process.
Ovchinnikov also highlighted that foreign factories also have a certain amount of defects, but due to their larger production volume, it is less noticeable, and they have a rejection process in place to address these issues. He believes that these defects can indicate areas for improvement in processes, materials, and equipment, similar to practices in foreign industries.