Russia is developing its own home-grown CPUs and they’re just like their predecessors — slow

At some point in our media consumption we’ve all heard the foreboding quote “history repeats itself.” In the case of Russian computing, this is true: The formerly-communist eastern nation is developing its very own CPU, and just like the last time when this occurred (in the second half of the 20th century), their home-grown hardware is severely lagging behind its western counterparts.

Introducing the Elbrus-4C, a CPU developed by the Russian company MCST (short for Moscow Center for SPARC Technologies) that’s expected to give late-stage Pentium III a run for its money. I joke, the Elbrus-4C is actually a 65nm process quad-core CPU clocked at 800 MHz that features x86 emulation; meaning, it allows x86 program code to be translated and executed through a virtual machine. Given the fact that Elbrus-4C does not feature an integrated GPU, its 989 million transistors are quite substantial.

Ars Technica points out that MCST is also selling a complete computer called Elbrus ARM-401 that comes with an Elbrus-compatible Linux distro by the same name —Elbrus. According to ARM-401’s product page, the Russian computer even supports Windows XP and other x86-comptabile OS. 

As for pricing? Translating the following Russian website reveals that ARM-401 will retail at 200,000 rubles, roughly equivalent to $4,000, although this will be “significantly reduced” in the future.

Source: Ars Technica