Sanctions have crippled Baikal’s production and packaging capabilities
Why it matters: Global sanctions against Russian companies have worked in at least one respect: Baikal Electronics can no longer supply enough chips to meet the country’s needs, and half of the chips it produces are defective. Russia is working to build up its domestic capabilities, but it is unclear whether it can catch up.
Baikal Electronics, one of Russia’s major processor developers, has been struggling in the wake of sanctions imposed by the US and UK governments following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Until then, the company ordered the production of chips, including their packaging, from TSMC.
The Taiwan-based chipmaker promptly stopped shipping processors that year because of the sanctions. The sanctions also blocked the Russian company from licensing Arm technology. Baikal, which switched from the Baikal-T series MIPS instruction set architecture to Arm years ago, used the technology in its Baikal-M, -S, and -L series chips.
The supply restrictions forced the company to turn inward to produce packaged and tested silicon. Russian business news outlet Vedomosti recently revealed that about half of the processors packaged in Russia are defective. A source told the paper that the failures are due to equipment that is not configured correctly and not having enough properly trained technicians for the chip packaging.
By “we,” I mean American officials. Considering that US intelligence thought that Ukraine would fall within weeks, I’m sure they were expecting sanctions to do much more and much quicker.
I’m pretty sure everyone underestimated Ukraine’s ability to defend and overestimated Russia’s ability to attack/invade.
However, you still talk about what you think, not what you know others thought.
Did you ignore my first sentence, or do you think I’m a senior-ranking US official? I made it pretty obvious that I was referring to how the US federal government viewed Russia and Ukraine.
No, I didn’t miss it.
Somehow you take one fact, “US officials thought Ukraine was going to fall within…” and explain that that fact makes you sure about something unrelated.
First of all, as far as I remember we all drew the conclusion that Ukraine would fall within weeks. No one could imagine Ukraine was going to be able to shoot down planes transporting troops (a fact later challenged because of lack of proof) within the first days. Add to this how badly Russia performed. No one, no one, saw that coming from what we all thought was one of three military superpowers. We all had to change the world ranking on the fly when we saw, the now infamous, Russian Kyiv convoy unfold. You know, the one that essentially was fully exposed to Ukrainian attacks because logistical problems. No one predicted any of the noob shit Russia has been doing during the aggression.
So who do you mean saw all this coming before it happened in early 2022?
Yes, both things are about Ukraine but one is military intelligence and the other is a political strategy.
Your opinions on the matter are totally okay, it’s a good ground for a healthy debate, but opinions are not facts.