• Welcome to Maher's Digital World.

"We will bury you!!!" Elbrus4 - new russian CPU for desktops.

Started by Daniil, April 30, 2014, 04:30 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Daniil


Hi, respectable specialists!
I'm proud to say, that this year, at April, 21, russian CPU developers presented to the market new desktop CPU MCST Elbrus-4S, and a new desktop platform "Monocube" on its base!

MCST (Moscow Center of SPARC-like Technologies, рус. МЦСТ, Московский ЦенÑ,Ñ€ СПАРК-ТеÑ...нологий) is a commercial department of Moscow Scientific Institute of Cybernetics and Calculating Machines. It was founded at 1958, and there was designed many calculating units for soviet military machines, particularly for artillery, rockets and spacecrafts.
MCST official site.

Since 1992 there designs a CPU's for military applications. This series of CPU called "Elbrus". Elbrus 1, 2, and 2S was very strange and weak CPU's with specific and slow architechture. They was used in military and scientific applications. In 2005 or 2006 I work for a while with a system based on "Elbrus 90 Micro". It was absollutelly stable, but very slow (something like PII 300 MHz) and doesn't support Windows.


But not today!
Now they presents "Elbrus 4S" - dual-core and quad core CPU.

(On photo is a prototype of Elbrus4S - in a shell of Elbrus2S)

Technical specifications:
4 cores.
Frequency: 800 MHz
Performance in 32-bit mode - up to 50 GFlops (comparable with Intel Core i7-975 XE!!!  ;D )
Performance in 64-bit mode - 25 GFlops
TDP - from 0 (in passive mode) to 45 Watts (under load).
Scalability: up to 4 processors on single board.
RAM: 3 channel DDR3 1600 MHz

Processor was designed for russian army, so it has no (no, null, nil, zero!) hardware errors, and resist to overheat (working temp - up to 100C), EMI and radiation.

It can do 50 GFlops in 32-bit calculations. This superior performance (on 800 MHz!) was achieved by using unique CPU architecture - VLIW - Very Large Instruction Word. This architecture was designed in MCST, and it is not an x86, not a RISC and not a SPARC, but (as says representatives of MCST) it absorbed all the best features of this 3 architecthures. It can emulate an x86, so any x86 OS works on this platform well.

As a platform for this CPU, MCST show a renewed "Monocube" platform. (on site shown an old Monocube based on "Elbrus 2C+")

Here you can see the old version of Monocube motherboard (mini-ITX with DDR2 and PCI-E 8x), next version will be mini-ITX with DDR3 and PCI-E 16x. As I can understand, it will be presented at summer.

This processors and motherboards will be send in stores at summer or at autumn, the price of Monocube barebone will be about 600-700$.


If to stay objective...
What we have here? It is a small, strange but interesting, effective processor (doing an old but Core i7 on 800 MHz clock frequency and 45 Watts TDP - it is really effective!). It can't yet drop the Intel from pedestal, and it can't overcome AMD in cost/quality comparation. But it is reliable, it can be good for servers, commercial applications.
I can't believe that it can be common processor. Create a good CPU isn't the same that sell a CPU well.
But, from the other side, till 21.04 I doesn't believe that we in Russia can ever made a modern CPU.
So, we will see. If Elbrus CPU becomes serial, they will be good althernative.

Daniil

Quote from: usmangujjar on April 30, 2014, 05:23 PM
what your scientific institute make computers for public?? or only for state army??
Scientific institute design the processor. Companies, linked with this institute, make computers, based on this processor, for army, business and private usage.

humbert

@Товарищ Daniil -> You know Russian history better than I do. Was Крущев (correct my spelling) really one of СÑ,алин's henchmen and executioners, or is that lies and exaggeration?

What is the proper spelling for "Yeltsin"?  The first letter has me confused.


Shadow.97


Daniil

@humbert
Comrade Humbert, I reply you in PM (in avoid to flood the topic with talking about old politics.)

@Usman
I gave a specification of Elbrus4 in the first post.
Also you can read something about this in wiki.
I'll search the price and specifications of Elbrus-based computers in russian online shops and translate it later.

Daniil

More news about MCST processors and Elbrus.
Guys in MCST (as always in Russia) works slow and on all questions answers "it'll be done when it's done".

But at January 13 in the news was article that first (test) series of motherboards with Elbrus2SM and Elbrus4 was sent to production.

Also, they created new CPU named Elbrus8S.
Technical specifications:
Architecture: VLIW
8 cores
Frequency: 1300MHz
Performance in 32-bit mode - up to 250 GFlops (More than ANY modern desktop CPU  ;D )
Performance in 64-bit mode - 125 GFlops
Tech. node: 28 nm
TDP - 55 Watts under load.
Scalability: up to 4 processors on single board.
RAM: 4 channel DDR3 1600 MHz

It doesn't have native Windows support (it's non-x86 CPU), but developers from MCST beats themself butt to the chest and promises that x86-emulation mode will be great.

Also they have added to Elbrus2S+ and Elbrus4 support of modern graphical API's, for example OpenGL. That's why I mentioned Elbrus 2SM. Elbrus 2SM = Elbrus 2S+ with media command module ("M" means "media"). Ofcourse Elbrus 8 will also have it.

Here is example - Linux Doom3 running on MCST Elbrus4
(CPU - Elbrus4S@720MHz, RAM - 12Gb DDR3-1600, Video - Radeon HD6970 2Gb, Resolution: FullHD, OS ElbrusLinux with Linux core 2.6.33)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MzOdIdzxSRs&feature=youtu.be

Elbrus 4 probably can be sent to market at the end of 2015, about prices today there is no info.

Vasudev

cpu frequency is lower than consumer grade cpus. 250GFlops on  crunching integer values or FP ones?

Daniil

Quote from: Vasudev on January 15, 2015, 02:57 PM
250GFlops on  crunching integer values or FP ones?
On single precision FP. I.e., on 4 byte floats, not on double.

humbert

If the Elbrus4 doesn't work with Windows yet, then was OS does it support? Linux or something else? Also, are they making compatible motherboards too?

Do these guys seriously believe they're going to compete against Intel or AMD?

Also: what is meant by 28nm tech node? Is this how far transistors are from one another or what?

Daniil

Quote from: humbert on January 16, 2015, 03:47 AM
If the Elbrus4 doesn't work with Windows yet, then was OS does it support? Linux or something else? Also, are they making compatible motherboards too?

Do these guys seriously believe they're going to compete against Intel or AMD?
It support Linux, compiled for VLIW architecture. It works with Windows, but under Windows CPU works in x86-emulating mode. Because of this, W7 or 8 doesn't work on it, only XP/Server 2003 can.

Quote from: humbert on January 16, 2015, 03:47 AM
Also: what is meant by 28nm tech node? Is this how far transistors are from one another or what?
It's size of transistor.