How we lost everything
Import substitution is a key trend of recent times, and it looks like it will remain so for the coming years, if not decades. This is especially critical for the defense industry and primarily for microelectronics.
According to the most conservative estimates, Russia's lag behind the key market players from the United States and South Korea is at least 25 years. For many positions, even in the defense industry, we were forced to purchase foreign components of the second-rate Industry standard, which, in particular, operate in the temperature range from minus 40 degrees to plus 85 degrees. Military-level equipment, which has both a higher radiation resistance and a much wider temperature range, was sold to us, if it was, then with big reservations. Nevertheless, only defense enterprises of the Russian Federation purchased in 2011 not the most modern electronic components abroad for an impressive 10 billion rubles. The famous Glonass-M consists of 75-80% foreign components. As it turned out, the roots of this sad trend were laid back in the Soviet Union.
In the 60s and 70s, the USSR was, if not a world leader, then one of the three main manufacturers of electronic components for both the defense sector and civilian consumption. At the same time, the total cost of the components was much lower than the global one. For example, the Electronpribor association in the early 70s produced powerful world-class transistors at a price of only $ 1, while in the West such equipment was much more expensive. In many ways, this was achieved by the complete self-sufficiency of domestic manufacturers: if foreign components were purchased, they were quickly and efficiently replaced by Soviet counterparts.
An illustrative example is the "Micro" radio receiver developed in the 60s by Zelenograd engineers, which had no analogues in the world at that time in terms of miniaturization. "Micro" has become a good export and image product - Nikita Khrushchev often gave it to the first persons of foreign countries. And single-crystal 16-bit micro-computers from the Leningrad Scientific and Technological Bureau were also the only ones of their kind: the corresponding competitors were just emerging in the United States. The semiconductor industry was overseen and sponsored by many departments: the Ministry of Defense Industry, the Ministry of Communications Industry, the Ministry of Electronics Industry and others. Scientific and industrial personnel were trained in the country. By 1976 alone under the auspices of the Zelenograd Scientific and Production Association "Scientific Center" more than 80 thousand people worked in 39 enterprises. What is the reason for the current deplorable state of our electronics industry? First, up to 95% of all products of all Soviet high-level electronics were consumed by the military along with the space sector. Such an obsession with defense orders and the de facto monopoly of the Ministry of Defense has played a cruel joke on the industry.
Around the beginning of the 80s, a half-delusional idea appeared about thoughtlessly copying foreign components for radio electronics. This was caused by the disbelief of both politicians and the military in the potential of Soviet scientists, in their ability to create something new. The army was afraid that if we do not copy now, then it is not a fact that tomorrow we will have something, at least analogous to the Western one. And this will have a direct impact on combat effectiveness. So, by the method of "reverse engineering", initiative in the development of their own ideas in specialized research institutes and NGOs was suppressed. At the same time, the Ministry of Electronprom frantically tried in the 80s to make up for lost time and saturate the domestic civilian market with high-tech products: computers, video and audio recorders. This, undoubtedly, the right decision would make it possible to finally move away from the diktat of the Ministry of Defense and obtain resources for the further development of the industry. But the production capacity was not enough at all, although they initially ensured the growth of production in 1985-1987 in the region of 25% per year. This came at a high price - by diverting a mass of specialists from innovative developments of the element base, which sharply slowed down the further development of microelectronics in the country.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the situation was aggravated by the indifference of the country's leadership to the problems of domestic microelectronics, as well as the actual opening of borders for competitive foreign technology. It was possible to collect the destroyed only in the 2000s, when the profile holdings "Radioelectronic Technologies" and "Ruselectronics" were created. They united under themselves many half-life enterprises that previously produced electronic components for the Soviet Union. However, they are stepping on the old rake - up to 75% of all orders come from government agencies and the military. Civilians prefer cheaper foreign technology, even if it is somewhat inferior in consumer qualities. A difficult situation has developed with the import substitution of electronic components of domestic weapons after the introduction of Western sanctions. It turned out that many weapons were simply not designed for larger and energy-hungry Russian microcircuits - the design documentation had to be revised. And, of course, domestic high-tech components seriously raised the total cost of weapons. Still, a single assembly is much more expensive than a conveyor one.
There is hope for the Mikron group of companies in Zelenograd, which is private and controlled by AFK Sistema. It was at Mikron that the first in Russia were able to master the production of microcircuits with a 180 nm topology (bought from STM), later dealt with 90 nm, and six years ago they independently developed a technology for a 65-nanometer topology. So far the only serial in the CIS. At the same time, in the West, they are already working hard on the topology of 5-7 nm. Paradoxically, in Russia there was not a sufficient wide market for such domestic equipment - almost everyone prefers to buy foreign counterparts from manufacturers whom they have known for more than a dozen years. For this reason, Russian developers cannot offer low prices - production volumes do not allow reaching large circulations. And the material condition does not give artificial dumping. A vivid example with the Russian computer "Elbrus-401", running on the Russian 4-core microprocessor "Elbrus-4K" with a clock frequency of 800 MHz and a peak performance of 50 Gflops, which cost … 229 thousand rubles in 2015! Now compare this with the 118 Gflops Intel Core i5-2500K processor and the cost of 25 thousand rubles in the same year.
"Era" intervenes
The well-known military innovation technopark "Era" in the near future will attempt to at least partially level the gap, which is becoming more and more critical every year. The Center for Technological Competencies is being created, the tasks of which will include the development of electronic components for military and dual-use. Nail Khabibulin, Deputy Head of the Technopolis for Innovative Development, claims that by 2026, as a result of the Center's work, technologies for the production of microprocessors with a topology of up to 28 nm will appear in Russia. Compare this with the Western level of microelectronics at the present time, and you will understand that the work of the Center will only preserve the existing status quo, in which we are always catching up.
Among the innovations of the Competence Center, the so-called verticalization is distinguished, which unites companies engaged in the development of an elementary microelectronic base, creators of algorithms and a division of the Era technopolis. Actually, this is very similar to the Soviet models of joint design of integrated circuits, which were proposed by the Ministry of Electronic Industry back in the 80s. Then the schematic stage of creating an integrated circuit was carried out by the customer (in modern times, technopolis "Era"), and the stage of development of the topology and design was already assigned to the enterprises of the Ministry. This, by the way, was later adopted by many private corporations in the West, which ensured breakthrough growth rates in electrical engineering.
Further, Khabibulin explains that all project participants will benefit from the implementation of an independent transfer channel for foreign technologies to select the most breakthrough in terms of application for domestic weapons systems. This veiled formulation hides a very simple idea - we are so far behind that we have to assemble special centers only for the mythical transfer of technology in microelectronics. How are they going to do it? None of the leading powers will sell us Military class equipment directly, not even China. Materials will not be published in open sources of the press about the most modern technologies of microelectronics of defense significance. And the rest of the information is already available to almost anyone who has a subscription and the Internet. Technopolis "Era" even gave this method a name - reverse engineering for solving specialized problems. Very similar to the "reverse engineering" that actually buried the microelectronics of the USSR in the 80s. Then the initiative also came from the military and officials.
In this situation, it is difficult to say what needs to be done. However, historical experience suggests what should not be done in order to avoid global problems. A simple "creative rethinking" of Western experience, firstly, will never give us an advantage in the race, but will only allow us to narrow the gap, and secondly, it will educate a whole generation of engineers and scientists who are not capable of doing anything but copying. Meanwhile, a possible way out of the complex situation that has arisen can be an appeal to fundamental science, which we have always been at its best. Still, it is in this plane that the most modern developments lie, which have not yet gone beyond the laboratories and from which the secrecy stamps have not yet been removed. These are projects to replace silicon with, for example, graphene, silicene and phosphorus. Of course, the stimulation of work in these areas will not look as pompous as the organization of the Era Technopark, but at least it will give us a chance to “step over generations” in the global microelectronics industry.
