Kommersant: Russia may stop production of Baikal processors due to British sanctions

Domestic developers of processors MCST and Baikal Electronics fell under the new UK sanctions against Russia. "Kommersant" writes about this.

JSC MCST produces Elbrus processors, and JSC Baikal Electronics produces Baikal processors. The latter company licenses the British ARM processor architecture which is also used by processors from Apple, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Samsung and other manufacturers.

In addition to freezing assets in the UK, the sanctions include a ban on the provision of technology services and financing, including the provision of grants, loans and contributions to the authorized capital.

“The new sanctions do not oblige British companies to revoke their intellectual property licenses they have already issued. But paying for new licenses without the permission of the Office for the Implementation of Financial Sanctions (OFCI) will not work,” explained Sergey Glandin, head of sanctions law and compliance practice at Pen & Paper.

According to a market source, Baikal Electronics owns both design and manufacturing licenses for all processors up to Baikal S (16 nm topology). However, the company has only design licenses for Baikal M2, Baikal L, Baikal S2 processors, which are under development.

Not a single factory will be able to work with Baikal Electronics without a production license. At the same time, in the case of the MCST, operating on its own architecture, everything will depend on access to the enterprise and the design rules for its technological processes, another "Kommersant" source believes.

Among the ways out of the situation for Baikal Electronics, a source in the industry calls the search for a factory that will infringe ARM's patent law, or the transfer of developments to open processor architectures, which will take two to three years and require up to 1 billion rubles.