Elbrus processors developer preparing to transfer production to Zelenograd's Mikron from Taiwan - media

MOSCOW. May 30 (Interfax) - Moscow Center of SPARC Technologies (MCST), the developer of Russian Elbrus processors, is in talks to potentially transfer production from Taiwan to the Mikron factory in Russia's Zelenograd, the RBC newspaper reported, citing Konstantin Trushkin, deputy general director for marketing at MCST.

Elbrus processors were previously made by Taiwan's TSMC , which after the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine ceased cooperation with Russian companies due to U.S. sanctions. Intel and AMD refused to supply their products to Russia at the same time.

Sanctions have closed off MCST's access to foreign factories, and the company is therefore looking at switching to Russian facilities where "decent processors can be created with sovereign Russian technologies for critical information infrastructure, information security, and other markets," Trushkin told RBC.

According to an RBC source on the IT market, MCST will need no less than a year and several billion rubles to transfer production to Mikron's factory.

The level of technological development in Russia is also substantially lower. TSMC factories can produce processors using a process from 90 nanometers to 5 nanometers and is also working on 2 nm topology. Mikron uses technology of 180-90 nm.

Going to 90 nm is a big step back, which shows that "own production using 28 nm technology should not be counted on in the near future, nor should reaching agreements with other foreign factories," the source said. The Elbrus processors produced at Mikron will be able to be used "at best in thin clients - compact computers without a hard disk, download of the main operating system of which happens on a server - as well as cash registers, or in some custom applications," according to the source.