General Director of T-Platform Vsevolod Opanasenko and Lomonosov supercomputer
The Bureau of Industry and Security (BPB), subordinated to the US Department of Commerce, 8 March announced the inclusion of the Russian company T-Platforms and its two branches in Germany and Taiwan in the “List of organizations and individuals acting contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests” .
Last October, the list already included companies from different countries of the world involved in illegal, as Americans believe, deliveries of electronic components from the USA to Russia. The difference is that those punished last year were distributors of electronic components, and T-Platforms is Russia's largest manufacturer of supercomputers, whose activities are of strategic importance to the country. Of the serious Russian organizations, the VNII of technical physics from Snezhinsk and the VNII of experimental physics from Sarov, that is, world-famous Russian nuclear centers, are included in this list.
The BIS decision states: “The Bureau has reason to believe that T-Platforms exported dual-use goods without the necessary license and that the company's activities are related to the development of computer systems for military purposes and the production of computers for nuclear research.”
Inclusion in the black list means that the company is set a “presumption of prohibition” on obtaining licenses for export, re-export and transfer of any goods and products manufactured in the United States or by American technology in other countries of the world.
The imposed restrictions close the possibilities not only for the purchase of electronic components in the States, but also for ordering chips, independently developed by T-Platforms, at any factory in the world, since all the factories use American technology. “Roughly speaking, we cannot buy sunflower oil if the field on which the sunflower grows is pollinated by American pesticides,” said Vsevolod Opanasenko, general director and co-owner of the company. For T-Platforms, this means an actual “ban on the profession”: without a corresponding element base, the production of which is under full American control, the creation of supercomputers is impossible. Moreover, the “ban on the profession” applies not only to the enterprise itself, but also to its leading managers, since it is valid for any companies of a similar profile created with their participation.
Supercomputers and T-Platforms
Supercomputers are called computers with huge processing power, which is measured in the number of floating point operations per second (FLOPS, flops). Such machines are used to predict weather and climate conditions, to simulate nuclear tests, to test various equipment - aviationautomobile; to simulate the life cycle of nuclear fuel cells. They are used in the design of nuclear and thermonuclear reactors, for the analysis of geological exploration data in the search and evaluation of oil and gas fields, and for DNA decryption. In other words, supercomputers are needed where numerical modeling is needed to solve problems, or where a huge amount of complex calculations is required, processing a large amount of data in real time.
Vladimir Betelin, Director of the Institute of System Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, still in 2009, in an interview (see “No supercomputer - leave the market” in “Expert” No. 37 for 2009 a year), expressed confidence that in the near future the main aircraft one of the conditions of delivery will make the presentation of the results of the simulation of the liner. And all those who do not have such a model will be extruded from the aircraft market. The same is true for the market of nuclear reactors and other markets for technically complex products. Thus, the problem of supercomputers is becoming a central issue in maintaining the country's competitiveness in high-tech product markets.
The state of affairs with supercomputers in different countries can be judged by the world rating of supercomputers Top-500. As of November, 2012 from 500 251 devices were from the USA, 72 from China, 32 from Japan, 19 from Germany and eight from Russia (four of them are of Russian design). And such a result for our country is not bad at all, if we consider that the development of supercomputers actually stopped in our 1990-s.
In Russia, a number of companies are engaged in the creation of supercomputers, including T-Platforms and the program of the Union State SKIF (in which T-Platforms also participate). Due to their activities, the share of foreign enterprises in the supercomputer market of Russia has decreased from more than 90% to less than 25%. Most of the T-Platforms public projects are implemented in universities, where they not only carry out scientific research on their machines, but also solve applied tasks for enterprises, and also train specialists to work on supercomputers. T-Platform supercomputers operate in Tomsk, Belgorod and South Ural universities. And the biggest achievement of T-Platform was the Lomonosov supercomputer, installed at Moscow State University and occupying 2012 in November 26 in the world Top-500.
From deliveries to industrial companies, we note projects with Sukhoi Design Bureau, Rusal and the St. Petersburg Central Research Institute for them. Academician A. N. Krylov. T-Platforms sell their systems not only in our country, but also abroad. The company's success attracted the attention of foreign partners, which allowed it to sell several systems to Europe and Singapore. And at the end of 2012, T-Platforms won a tender for the supply of a supercomputer to New York State University. And she won such competitors as Dell and HP. All in all, the company has supplied about 300 systems of various capacities and now occupies up to 50% of the Russian market and up to 1% of the global supercomputer market in money. The company has hundreds of patents in the field of supercomputing.
Why could this happen
The T-Platforms company, as stated in the Bureau of Industry and Security's decision, is related to organizations operating contrary to US national security and US foreign policy interests, and is associated with the development of computer systems for military purposes and the production of computers for nuclear research. In general, there are many such companies in Russia, but with the exception of two of which we spoke, no one else has been blacklisted. “We did not cooperate with Iran, they didn’t deliver anything to Bin Laden. Why we came under such punitive measures, we do not understand. Nobody informed us about the inclusion in the list. Therefore, the company immediately filed an application with the bureau asking for reasons for the decision. But so far there has been no answer, ”says Opanasenko. The appeal to the representative of this bureau in Russia - the attache of the American embassy for export control - also did not clarify anything. And the revision of the decision is essentially difficult: if to add a structure to the list of legal and physical persons of concern to any American department, a simple majority of votes of the commission members making the relevant decision is required, then in order to remove a company from the list or change an existing record , the result of the vote must be unanimous.
Naturally, I want to understand how, after all, the company was blacklisted. The issue in this case is with subtext, because T-Platforms is a leading player in the Russian supercomputer market, and since the Russian industry cannot do without supercomputers, it turns out that the market immediately goes to the Americans.
Whether it’s American counterparts who managed to somehow influence the decision of their government agencies, or the decision is dictated by the desire of the American government agencies themselves to strangle the fast-growing innovative Russian company in the sphere that they want to keep under their control, or both, taken together. Or maybe, finally, this is a puncture of the company itself, which somewhere violated the American export rules, which they rushed to use, imposing the toughest possible sanctions on an active and successful Russian company.
As Ivan Pokrovsky, Director General of the Information and Analytical Center of Modern Electronics, explains, the American regulatory authorities act very formally, and T-Platforms, as an end-user of electronic components, could get under the distribution not because of its own errors, but, for example, - because I used the services of some other company that was blacklisted. And for reasons not related to the activities of T-Platforms. As an example, Pokrovsky cites the situation with the companies ARC Electronics and Apex System. Both firms are accused of violating export controls, and their leaders are tried in the US; So, Americans have all their consumers included in the black list.
Apparently, overseas drew attention to T-Platforms long before March 2013. In 2010, T-Platforms opened a representative office in Hanover. The company managed to find promising customers. According to Opanasenko, this happened “largely due to the shortage of own manufacturers of supercomputers in Europe, interest in innovative and original developments of the company, as well as its readiness, unlike American corporations, to carry out“ custom ”hardware and software together with European users.
Supercomputer "Lomonosov"
The first bell, which warned about the problems that may arise in a supercomputer company in cooperation with the West, was heard during Dmitry Medvedev's visit to Germany in 2011 year. Then, at a meeting with Angela Merkel, it was supposed to discuss cooperation between Germany and Russia in the field of supercomputers, in which, of course, T-Platforms was interested, but as far as it became known, Merkel refused to discuss this particular point at the last moment.
The second bell sounded in 2012 year. The company has worked closely for many years with the Juelich Research Center in Germany, one of the leading European research centers with and one of the largest supercomputers in the world. Several years ago it was decided to formalize the cooperation between them, concluding a communique. But it turned out to be difficult. One of the experts close to the company said that, having learned of this intention, the German Ministry of Science intervened in the matter and tried to ban the signing of the communique. And, as far as we know, the order came from German Chancellor Merkel after the call of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, stressing that cooperation with Russia in such a sensitive area is undesirable. In the end, the Juliha Center insisted on the conclusion of both the communique and the contract for the supply of a supercomputer to the Center. According to the company, according to the signed cooperation agreement, in the 2013 year, T-Platforms should center on a prototype of a supercomputer up to 100 teraflops air-cooled and develop a number of promising software technologies. The system has already been assembled in the European office of T-Platforms. The continuation of the project - the installation of a water-cooled multi-petaflops system is scheduled for 2014 year.
Despite the problems, the company continued to pursue an active policy in Europe. In 2012, the offer of T-Platforms and the Finnish supercomputer center CSC to build a prototype of a promising supercomputer for the pan-European program “Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe, PRACE) received the highest score in evaluating PRACE projects. The first stage of the prototype in CSC was installed and adopted in November 2012 of the year. In 2013, a hot water-cooled system with a capacity of about 300 teraflops should be installed. Among other European projects, the company notes cooperation with the second largest German computing center in Leibnitz (Leibnitz Rechenzentrum) in research in the field of energy efficient supercomputer architectures based on the prototype of a water-cooled system supplied by T-Platforms. But now all these projects are questionable. True, hope still remains - the Russian Foreign Ministry and influential people with good connections in American political circles have joined the problem solving.
New COCOM
Regardless of the reasons that led to the inclusion of T-Platforms in the American blacklist, it is clear that maintaining such dependence on our industry and defense from the goodwill of the Americans and their allies makes our technological sovereignty highly conditional. Moreover, this dependence exists in almost all sectors of the innovation industry - from machine tools to microelectronic chips.
The president of the ELVIS group of companies, Yaroslav Petrichkovich, notes that behind the incident lies a systemic problem: “In the modern high-tech world, the Americans, using their technological advances, laid a huge number of threshold limiters, thanks to which at any moment any unnecessary US development can be blocked. Because the States hold under their control most of the technology of microelectronics and decide who to them - and to what extent - allow. And at least in the coming decades, the world will have to live with these global restraints. ”
The Soviet Union, although it was lagging behind the United States in the field of microelectronics, owned almost the entire spectrum of the necessary technologies, and most importantly, had electronic engineering, which made it possible to manufacture all the necessary equipment. Now, alas, everything has changed: over the past 20 years, most of the technologies have been lost, industry research institutes eke out a miserable existence or shut down, and electronic engineering is almost completely lost.
In the state program of the Russian Federation “Development of the electronic and radio-electronic industry for 2013 – 2015 years” it is planned to achieve the level of chip production technology in 45 nm with the subsequent transition to 2025 nm technology in 10. Unfortunately, the program does not indicate ways to achieve these goals. In principle, there may be two such ways: the acquisition of appropriate equipment or the development of your own. The first path is again coupled with American control. So, the Russian company "Micron" coordinated the purchase of the factory for the production of 90 nm chips with the corresponding American structures. Already, the production of microcircuits using 28 nm technology is owned by only six companies, and on 22 nm - four companies. And experts predict further monopolization of chip production. Under these conditions, it is naive to at least be willing to share technologies with others. In addition, the cost of the factory for the production of 10 nm chips reaches several tens of billions of dollars.
The second way, given the state of our industry, is no easier. In the article “Fold up nanopiaceans” (see “Expert” No. 4 for 2012 a year), we cited the opinion of the head of the Micron group of companies, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Gennady Krasnikov about ways to solve the problem of electronic engineering: “There are two options for industrial policy field of electronic engineering. If there is money, if there is a scientific development and confidence that our development is the best and will be able to win a substantial part of the market, then we need to develop our own industry. And if you do not have the necessary strength and money, then the second option is possible - joining an international alliance, as all companies in the world now work. Although, if we want to take part in the alliance on an equal footing, we still need development and money. Because if you invest your money and resources there, then you have the same rights as others. And if you do work on other people's money, then you give not only the results of your work, but also intellectual property. ” Several years ago, Gennady Krasnikov, Director of the Physics and Technology Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences Alexander Orlikovsky and Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolay Salashchenko appealed to the government with a proposal to create an electronic engineering development program in Russia, but did not receive support.
It is appropriate to recall here that the rules for the sale of dual-use items (and modern microelectronics almost completely complies with this definition) are subject to the so-called Wassenaar agreements on the export control of conventional weapons and high technologies (“dual-use goods and technologies”), to which Russia, and according to them, each state itself determines that of such goods and technologies it is ready to sell and to whom. In fact, this is a new form of the notorious COCO. And here the Americans are untied.
Another thing is that such a practice of “banning the profession” actually buries the frivolous dreams of some of our politicians and public figures about the free exchange of goods and technologies, about fair competition between Russia and Western countries, and even more so that Russia will be helped to modernize its economy. It may help, but up to a certain limit, and the production of supercomputers is clearly beyond it.
The list of goods and services subject to the export control rules. All goods and services whose country of origin is the United States, regardless of their location. Components, materials, software or other goods whose country of origin is the United States, collected abroad in a product of foreign manufacture , in which the established maximum of American-made components is exceeded. Certain foreign-made products directly derived from the use of an American technologist th or software obespecheniya.Opredelennye goods produced in any enterprise or by the main etogopredpriyatiya equipment located outside of the US, if a company or equipment established by the direct use of US technology or software.
