[Hexus]Russia building 'Baikal processor' to replace AMD and Intel chips

[TuxDave]

True. But the general public and consumer market?

If I was a russian i would greatly prefer a non-government CPU.

I'm not Russian but if I pretended to be one...

... I would be more afraid of the Russian mafia paying the Gov't to implement a backdoor on their behalf. So yeah, the fake Russian in me would prefer a USA based chip. But then again, as a US citizen I'm sort of biased and I really don't know how things run over there.

 

[Homeles]

Silly paranoia of hardware backdoors?

Kind of like those silly tin foilers who said the US government was collecting every email, internet packet, and cell phone meta+ data. Oh wait it has been proven true, and they've been doing it for MANY years.

Kind of like how the US gov has intercepted hardware shipments to anyone they suspect of anything and implanting bugs/spying hardware/software on the device?

You're point of paranoia concerning spying is unfounded. Thanks for playing you win nothing.

Thanks for making this thread political.

 

[Exophase]

Silly paranoia of hardware backdoors?

Kind of like those silly tin foilers who said the US government was collecting every email, internet packet, and cell phone meta+ data. Oh wait it has been proven true, and they've been doing it for MANY years.

Kind of like how the US gov has intercepted hardware shipments to anyone they suspect of anything and implanting bugs/spying hardware/software on the device?

You're point of paranoia concerning spying is unfounded. Thanks for playing you win nothing.

So I guess we've gone from guilty until proven innocent to guilty until proven implausible. Just because the government has done the things you've listed doesn't mean they've infiltrated every single electronics device sold. Sorry if I'd like to see evidence backing specific claims (and then I'm the one who is said to have unfounded claims..). And sorry if I see the examples you've given as being a different sort of thing than exploits intrinsic to the design of every Intel CPU. Intrinsic is important, some other piece of hardware put inside a computer could easily be found and software is moot.

I am actually pretty curious about how this backdoor-on-a-CPU works - limiting things to the actual CPU and embedded components in a current Intel desktop part like Haswell. I guess it'd have to recognize sequences of code in drivers for devices like ethernet controllers (which ones? All of them?) and modify it in a pretty non-trivial way. Maybe I'm missing some more obvious ideas and someone could tell me, but this doesn't sound very easy to do.

 

[ShintaiDK]

Hardware level monitoring is quite inferiour and can be directly marketshare suicidal for any company working with any national agencies.

Even the highest ranking and most secure military installations are still easily hacked due to the human factor. And by that I mean software based. And that wont change anytime soon.

 

[Homeles]

I am actually pretty curious about how this backdoor-on-a-CPU works - limiting things to the actual CPU and embedded components in a current Intel desktop part like Haswell. I guess it'd have to recognize sequences of code in drivers for devices like ethernet controllers (which ones? All of them?) and modify it in a pretty non-trivial way. Maybe I'm missing some more obvious ideas and someone could tell me, but this doesn't sound very easy to do.

Well, one obvious idea would be that they could put wireless transceivers on die... but that's definitely not happening at the moment.

 

[bryanW1995]

That assumes there are no spooky-spooks (planted moles or turn-coats) on the design team for the Russian chip...or that the NSA doesn't find a way to hack in and make a few advantageous changes

This seems like a quite-likely scenario to me. Snowden only had access to relatively harmless info, it's unlikely in the extreme that a.) those we were snooping had no idea of said snooping, and b.) that they aren't at least trying to do the same thing to us.

Hmm, I'd say that intel is doing just fine, in spite of the alleged avalanche of cancelled orders. Look at their 5 yr chart:

https://www.google.com/search?q=int...l2.688j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=122&ie=UTF-8

Kinda surprising actually, I haven't been following much tech news lately, they're up 50% in the last 18 mos.

 

[bryanW1995]

Silly paranoia of hardware backdoors?

Kind of like those silly tin foilers who said the US government was collecting every email, internet packet, and cell phone meta+ data. Oh wait it has been proven true, and they've been doing it for MANY years.

Kind of like how the US gov has intercepted hardware shipments to anyone they suspect of anything and implanting bugs/spying hardware/software on the device?

You're point of paranoia concerning spying is unfounded. Thanks for playing you win nothing.

Hey, that only happened SOME of the time!

I'm no tin foil hat-wearer, but I've always just kind of assumed that anything I say or email was being at least casually checked for phrases like "I'm going to kill the President...of Russia unless he let's those Ukranians live in peace" or "I like the Chinese more than the American's...food" or some such...

 

[Exophase]

Well, one obvious idea would be that they could put wireless transceivers on die... but that's definitely not happening at the moment.

Right - I'm only considering exploits possible in currently existing hardware. Embedded radios or embedded ethernet for that matter are a much more obviously viable vector.

Although I'm sure you remember that thread where claims were being made that Core chips already had embedded backdoor radios -_-

 

[Homeles]

Right - I'm only considering exploits possible in currently existing hardware. Embedded radios or embedded ethernet for that matter are a much more obviously viable vector.

Although I'm sure you remember that thread where claims were being made that Core chips already had embedded backdoor radios -_-

Yeah... analog just looks so... different from digital. Even if Intel were to fudge their die shots, or stop providing them altogether (unlikely, given how much Intel likes to show them off), a place like Techinsights or Chipworks would pick up on that immediately. Intel's "digital radio" still uses a bit of analog, and even if it didn't, it still doesn't look even remotely similar to the rest of the circuits they use. It's not even remotely ready for prime time either.

Plus, there's the fact that Intel doesn't even have their cellular transceivers on their manufacturing processes anyway. Massive roadblock there, lol. And if they wanted to just do wi-fi, they'd be able to tap next to nothing.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg...

Anyway, the only thing I could think of as far as a "hardware vulnerability" goes is some way of snooping encryption keys. I don't know the software side of things well, so it may not be possible. But for whatever reason, my mind immediately jumped to the idea of non-volatile memory on board that could store the keys, but that would require physical access to the hardware and would be perhaps the most inefficient way possible to gain access to encryption keys. An encryption vulnerability would be really easy to work around too...

 

[chrisjames61]

http://hexus.net/tech/news/cpu/71357-russia-building-baikal-processor-replace-amd-intel-chips/

Another ARM player ehehehehe
Seriously now, nothing is stopping more rich countries of doing the same thing. Another blow to x86 volumes :whiste:

Be great till Joe Russian tries to fire up his favorite game!

 

[Homeles]

Be great till Joe Russian tries to fire up his favorite game!

On government hardware? I think you get executed in Russia for that.

 

[Enigmoid]

And the plot thickens.

Yep. If someone else gets the info about those vulnerabilities they would be in tremendous trouble. Alternatively, release information concerning those vulnerabilities and watch the mess unfold and Russia loses tremendous reputation and consumers dump products.

 

[SammichPG]

it's almost like a group of philosophers and statesmen had foreseen issues in commerce, personal liberties, and international trust due to invasive police state policies and wrote some sort of document which specifically forbade those actions. Consta-something or other. The 4th whatchacallit

As your illustrious president said your rights are protected, but the rest of the world is fair game.
Guess how the rest of the world feels about it.

I must play devil's advocate. Does anyone think a chip designed by the Russian government is any less likely to have secret backdoors or hacks?

Counter argument: why shouldn't I hedge my bets on who's spying me? They own the internet already, let them work a bit harder on my end point?

So I guess we've gone from guilty until proven innocent to guilty until proven implausible.

Exactly.
Once you squander the trust that businesses had in your products they will never come back if they have a choice.
This is about business and global competition, the nsa spying gives american companies a competitive advantage before accounting for superior efficiency and tech.

 

[StinkyPinky]

So which operating system are they going to run?

 

[USER8000]

Wouldn't indigenous processors like this and Elbrus be free of US export restrictions and technology sanctions too??

 

[ashetos]

Imagine if open source hardware becomes popular? Huh!

 

[ShintaiDK]

Imagine if open source hardware becomes popular? Huh!

CPU wise it would be a trip back to the stoneage. Maybe it could work for a NIC or a sound DSP.

 

[sm625]

Unless they are designing this chip by way of reverse engineering alien technology found at the bottom of Lake Baikal, I can only wish them luck. Did yall know that Lake Baikal is actually bigger than all the Great Lakes combined, in terms of water volume?

 

[teejee]

Unless they are designing this chip by way of reverse engineering alien technology found at the bottom of Lake Baikal, I can only wish them luck. Did yall know that Lake Baikal is actually bigger than all the Great Lakes combined, in terms of water volume?

Looks like they will license A57 cores, so it doesn't sound too difficult to succeed.
I guess performance will be better than Bay Trail Pentium if they use A57 cores. Not too bad in that case.

 

[DrMrLordX]

So which operating system are they going to run?

Probably ARM ReactOS.

 

[CHADBOGA]

Who knew that the Russian people didn't care about backwards compatibility for their software?

 

[monkeydelmagico]

Hardware level monitoring is quite inferiour and can be directly marketshare suicidal for any company working with any national agencies.

Even the highest ranking and most secure military installations are still easily hacked due to the human factor. And by that I mean software based. And that wont change anytime soon.

Amen. Hardware is rarely the security issue. So if the ruskies want into the chip business it isn't because they are scared of the NSA.

 

[NTMBK]

This is probably less about the NSA, and more about fear of embargoes. If the US government says "okay you've annexed too many countries, go sit in the corner, no Intel for you" then there isn't a lot Russia (or Intel) can do about it.

 

[ShintaiDK]

This is probably less about the NSA, and more about fear of embargoes. If the US government says "okay you've annexed too many countries, go sit in the corner, no Intel for you" then there isn't a lot Russia (or Intel) can do about it.

And how would you uphold that embargo? Plenty of countries in both europe and asia would happily keep selling. North Korea even uses Dell just to make an example. Not to mention europe wouldnt want such an embargo. Because it would mean the gas would be stopped as well. And countries like germany would freeze to death in winter.

 

[AtenRa]

And countries like germany would freeze to death in winter.

Some times I wonder how Humanity survived the pre-oil/gas age