Processor sour cabbage
The GLONASS system uses American Intel, which means that it is vulnerable in wartime. There is no guarantee that a special signal will not arrive on board the satellite at an hour from across the ocean. And our global positioning equipment and georeferencing blind. When will we overcome the dependence on the supply of electronic components from the West? What does that require?
The problem of import substitution is not as simple as it was recently even seemed to some state leaders who said that in two or three years Russia will get rid of imported components. Now it turns out that in five years it will be necessary to purchase, if not in the West, so in the East, up to 30 percent of ECB. All this is the result of underestimating the role of our own machine-tool industry and microelectronics, an erroneous message: we will buy everything for oil.
Military space is not for us
The failure in the production of automated special-purpose systems is particularly acute. The most important requirement for the development of such equipment is the use of the domestic electronic database and components. They are defined in annually published lists. The list of EKB-2014 includes components of two main categories: 5 acceptance (military military) and 9 acceptance (products for space).
Let us explain: in the West, microcircuits are divided into commercial, industrial, military, and space.
Commercial - the most massive. They are designed for home and office products, designed for temperatures from 0 to + 75 ° C.
Industrial and military are conventional microcircuits that withstand cooling and a little more heating (from -40 to + 125 ° С). They are usually in plastic cases.
Space - radiation-resistant microcircuits for space applications. They are enclosed in a metal-ceramic case, differ in design and great rigor of manufacturing technology.
For sale of military chips and especially space there are significant limitations - special permits are required. If they supply them to us, it is only for civil engineering. The accession of the country to the WTO did not help either. If, nevertheless, it is possible to agree on the purchase of microcircuits in the execution of space, the time of their manufacture, delivery can reach a year.
In Russia, chips are sold with 1 acceptance (the so-called Quality Control acceptance, when the plant itself tests the chips), 5 acceptance (that is, the customer, when used in military equipment, the military representative controls the tests) and 9 acceptance (only the most qualified staff).
In exceptional cases (in the absence of the necessary components and according to a separate decision), our IWT is allowed to use foreign-made ECB. This is a complex process, due to the fact that the decisions are examined in the 46 Central Research Institute of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, the Ministry of Industry and Trade of the Russian Federation, are agreed in the instances and approved by the Deputy Minister of Defense. The relevant documents indicate the deadline for the transition to domestic components, mandatory certification, and special checks. Do not use products without lead solders and in plastic cases.
The cheapness of imported components compared to ours is explained by the fact that they are commercial, not military (military) execution. We use them in PVN not from a good life. Components of military execution can be ten times more expensive than commercial ones. But even at such a price they are absent in the Russian market.
“A number of components in the performance of military and space (tantalum and ceramic capacitors) have, in contrast to commercial ones, substantially large dimensions, which is due to reliability, reserve in terms of parameters,” explains Vladimir Narkhov, a representative of NIISSU JSC. “The presence of precious metals on the contacts of switching components, connectors, switches, etc. is obligatory, which also affects the price, not to mention the use of metal-ceramic shells and testing for radiation resistance.”
Abroad, in the military and civilian equipment, only solders with lead are used to obtain high performance. Russia, on the other hand, sells only components for commercial use, which are manufactured using lead-free technology (plumbum free). “Of course, it’s a disaster that we buy commercial equipment for military purposes,” says Narkhov. “Therefore, the quality of the equipment is obtained accordingly.”
Why are prices for domestic products high? One of the reasons - the lack of mass production, comparable to foreign. In Russia, practically no electronic equipment is being made for national economic use, household appliances, medical equipment, etc., on domestic components. And the market for such products is relatively small to expand mass production.
In addition, the supply of domestic appliances has to wait a long time, which is caused by small-scale production, the lack of working capital by the manufacturers. As a result, the deadline for order fulfillment is equal to the technological cycle. It is not surprising that consumers turn to Western manufacturers who can ship goods from the warehouse.
30 On April, the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued an order No. 662 on the development of the domestic radio-electronic industry up to 2025. Realization of this plan, I hope, will help eliminate Russia's lagging behind the world-class ECB, reduce the dependence of our military equipment on supplies from abroad. But it would be naive to believe that we will be able to quickly catch up and overtake, after all, they lagged for decades. One resolution does not solve the problem.
Take the largest factory of connectors "Elecon" (Kazan), currently overloaded with orders, which, it would seem, should please. But there, as many years ago, they reproduce the Ukrainian nomenclature of the ECB. Many products are outdated. Although even they are not enough in the domestic market. And development requires investment, updating of the machine park, retraining of personnel. Simply rivet consumer goods. And so, apparently, things are in many factories.
According to Narkhov, the Ministry of Industry and Trade issued an order in April, and even the money for the priority development of the ECB has not yet been allocated to anyone. Enterprises are forced to bow to Western suppliers or, as a senior Rostec official once said, to turn in connection with the sanctions to the East.
“Our collaborators are forced to use, for example, only imported ECB, and so far domestic components do not even intend to install,” admitted frankly at the Innovations Day of the Defense Ministry of Narhov.
From the top of "Elbrus"
Our country must take the path of unification, says a member of the scientific and technical council of the military-industrial complex, a representative of the Research Institute of Automatic Equipment named after Academician Semenikhin German Oganyan. You should also determine the total for all complex technical software that will move the situation off the ground. In the meantime, each chief designer adds his own resistor, a capacitor, and tries to bring the product to the market.
Many domestic components (passive resistors, capacitors, piezotechnics, connectors) are already of sufficiently high quality; by 90, the percent corresponds to imported ones. The problem is in microelectronics, where we have a huge hole. The thing is that our specialists and consumers do not even know about the components of Russian production produced in a small amount. There is still no official and accessible list of ECB produced in our country.
Import substitution in office operating systems and programs is also a costly pleasure. Solving this problem by releasing individual components will fail. It also requires a comprehensive solution, including for the import of automated control systems. The life cycle of our ACS is 15 – 20 years. Buying for them even cheap Intel is not an option. After five to six years, a new modification processor is required. Therefore, it is necessary to rely on the domestic ECB manufactured by some OPK plants.
There are domestic microprocessors (MP) of the Elbrus series ЕNNUMXК, a number of others made under license. However, it is not surprising if we recall that the Soviet experts stood at the origins of the Intel Pentium. The USSR at one time achieved significant success in computer technology. What are the Elbrus supercomputers, which were created at the Institute of Fine Mechanics and Computer Engineering (ITM & T) in 2 – 70's. The same name carries a series of microprocessors and systems manufactured on their basis and manufactured today by CJSC “MCST” (Moscow Center for SPARC-technologies).
The downside of the process is that full import substitution is impossible. It is important to produce what determines information security. And this - MP and other components, including resistors. But what software should be in this case?
According to Herman Ohanian, there is a need for a unified software environment for all levels of management, which consists of three levels. The first is the operating system. The second is system-wide software. The third is special software for automated control systems.
System-wide software includes features such as security, work management, resiliency failures, and video conferencing. All these modules must be in the same layer. That is, import substitution requires the introduction of a unified software environment.
No less acute is the problem of maintenance. In the USA, for example, it is customary to talk about the cost of joint ownership. If some system is implemented, then 30 percent of investment goes to its development, and 70 percent - to service during 15 – 20 years of operation. We need to automate these solutions, which will dramatically reduce maintenance staff, and thus reduce the cost of ownership.
As for the protection of information, it is often missing its hardware support. “We have such protection introduced into the operating system and is called Elbrus OS,” says Ohanian. “We usually trust our trading partners and allies.” But it was our system that allowed us to detect the so-called bookmarks in the Windows and Linux libraries. If we do not solve this problem at the all-Russian level, then it’s difficult to talk about information security. Then each chief designer will have to write their own software, which will not be combined with others. Moreover, the joint responsibility for the software used in the Armed Forces and the corresponding hardware platform are needed. Such an approach is incorporated in our documents. ”
Problems remain with the use of legacy software. To solve them, the Elbrus OS uses the so-called binary translation programs, which allow it to perform tasks developed on Windows and other Shirtrebovskih operating systems on a military system. In 2012, the military industrial complex held a meeting on the creation of a domestic hardware platform. However, the program lacks specific wording and terms. In addition, the model for the control system can not be common, because so far there is no single idea of what to take as a basis.
“We have not monitored the operating systems adopted by the armed forces, and we are not fully aware of their compatibility level,” said Ohanian. - Not to mention the language of the algorithms. Many different languages are used today: C, C ++, Java, C #, 1C. And yet in the domestic processor managed to solve this problem. In Elbrus, for example, you can automatically change the program and load four cores. With an Elbrus clock frequency of 300 MHz, we’ll get the performance of many of Intel’s favorite 1,5 GHz Intels. ”
What is the price of such a kit? A domestic server is now being produced with 12,5 teraflops performance on Elbrus, costing 500 thousand rubles. It’s a lot or a little to judge by specialists. But he is, there are no problems with spare parts. You do not need to purchase an insurance spare parts kit for 10 – 15 years, as it happens with imported equipment.
How to lose documents
The developer of domestic software from OAO NPO Angstrem announced that their OS can meet all requirements, including the Ministry of Defense, and be protected. After the company incorporated the ROSA group of companies into its membership, their operating systems are built for different architectures. Having our own developments allows us to conduct many projects in a single environment, quickly transferring resources, to maintain their relevance. Distribution OS "ROSA" includes a huge package base. But for this OS, alas, a lot is still being borrowed. “We cannot create everything ourselves,” admitted the representative of the NGO Angstrom. - Although we are implementing and developing our own unique domestic product. Currently, operating systems are used for integration with domestic manufacturers of processors, in particular, Elvis. This, for example, the signal processor 1892ВМ10Я (Navikom-02T) with built-in GLONASS / GPS function. RPC Elvis JSC (Zelenograd) is a domestic fabless design center, a leader in the design of multi-core signal microprocessors in Russia. The company's strategy in VLSI projects - conceptually new domestic export-suitable chips. On their basis, it is possible to create advanced dual-use radio-electronic equipment systems with the 10 – 15-year life-support cycle. ”
Boris Sokolov, Deputy Director of the St. Petersburg Institute of Informatics and Automation of the Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that we need to learn how to create multifunctional unified software and hardware systems that are guaranteed to counter external threats. “Our institute is developing a national intellectual analytical platform. Since the most expensive and valuable that no one will sell to us is special software and software. But by and large, it’s time to create a Union of Information and Analytical Systems Developers in the country (Gosinformsystem), so that there is healthy competition at the server level, and the customer (Ministry of Defense, Govt. Structures) could choose the best quality product. ”
In March, the 2014 of the year, a meeting of the academic council of the military industrial complex took place, where they determined the direction in which we should move towards the development of a national information and analytical platform that is directly related to the ACS, including the military. But if we talk about global import substitution in the national economy, the conclusion is disappointing: we are physically unable to create complete chains of electronics production. This is the viewpoint of Alexey Morozov, a representative of Svyaz Engineering CJSC. According to him, this requires five percent of the world market.
Most of the military and government agencies use office tools from Microsoft Corporation. If we consider their composition, they are a text and table processor, presentation preparation tools, a graphical editor, a database. Microsoft Office time to replace. There is a free software package, which is similar to these tools, in particular LibreOffice.
“The point is that Microsoft Office functions on Windows and Mac OS. It does not work on Linux and is unlikely to happen, says Andrei Borisov, a representative of JSC RusBITech. - Therefore, it is necessary to discuss the issue of the availability of source codes for certification and information protection. The corporation does not provide them. Sooner or later, the problem of licensing will also become relevant. At Microsoft Office it costs money, at LibreOffice - for free. ”
If we work in any office tool and save the data in its basic format, then you can not worry about the information. Subsequently, any file is displayed without distortion. If we save the data in a different format (Microsoft Office), then the part may be lost. But the bulk of software in government and military government is outdated. If the files fall into an environment that is certified for information protection requirements, the data will be lost. That is, the questions of import substitution are directly related to the formats that must be used to save documents, including secret documents.
To avoid overlaps, you must:
make adjustments to the departmental regulatory framework to exclude requirements for the use of Microsoft software and formats and include requirements for the use of PDF (Portable Document Format) formats, as well as public fonts developed with the assistance of Rospechat and containing alphabetic characters from all languages of the Russian Federation;
Deploy the LibreOffice office suite to the military and government authorities at the officials' workstations;
release study materials, conduct employee training for the use of the office package LibreOffice.
In the meantime, it seems that every Russian developer of IT-technologies is brewed in its own juice, not combined with other common goals and does not see the wood behind the trees.
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