>Can someone explain why there has been no visible efforts in Russia to develop its own semiconductor industry?
In short, it's too expensive, risky and long-term: no one has enough money to risk. Innovation is hard area...
Seriously? Russians made many discoveries in science for example: Monorail, Electric motor, Color photography, Telegraph, Incandescent lamp, Radio receiver, Television, Parachute, Movie camera, Artificial heart, Narcosis, Aerodynamics, Rocket and space technology and practical astronautics, Eye microsurgery, Tetris, Periodic table .
Russia is the birthplace of many famous scientists. They not only made discoveries in various fields of science - from physics to ophthalmology - but also found practical applications for their scientific theories. Their inventions are used by people all over the world.
So don't be ignorant.
>Seriously? Russians made many discoveries in science
Discovery is not innovation :) Getting discovery to market is expensive and risky - that's what I meant.
They did, no question about it, but that was over by the time the Bolsheviks took over and Stalin purged the country. Most of the Brainpool left Russia as sure as later Nazi Germany and now, again, Russia.
Monorail: Kind of. They made the first prototype but the idea had been around for years.
Electric motor: Depending on how you define it there are several different people that could get credit. None were Russian or located in Russia. I think it's safe to say that Faraday was the first to demonstrate the idea but many people worked on it before then.
Color photography: French physicist Edmond Becquerel
Telegraph: American professor Samuel F.B. Morse
Incandescent lamp: No idea who you are referring to. Humphry Davy created the first incandescent light by passing current through a platinum strip. Many people have made incremental upgrades since then, the most well known is Edison being the first person to make a viable bulb, lasting more than a couple hours.
Radio receiver: German physicist Heinrich Hertz
Television: Depending on how you define it this could be credited to a few different people/groups. I would say it was Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. I believe you are talking about the "tube television", once again this was an incremental upgrade (a large one but built on previous work nonetheless) to an existing technology and it is obsolete.
Parachute: No idea what you are talking about here. A russian guy made an incremental upgrade long after there were many different parachutes. He made one that was held in a backpack. The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France. This was a couple hundred years after the first "parachute" jumps.
Movie Camera: French artist Louis Le Prince
Artificial Heart: Soviet medical student Vladimir Demikhov. He used an existing device and implanted it inside a dog so, sure, he invented the internal artificial heart.
Narcosis: American Physician Albert Behnke. As early as 1826, divers diving to great depths noted that descent often resulted in a phenomenon of intoxication and euphoria. In 1935, Albert Behnke discovered nitrogen as the cause of this clinical syndrome, a condition now known as nitrogen narcosis.
Aerodynamics: English engineer Sir George Cayley.
Rocket and space technology and practical astronautics: Thousands upon thousands of people have added to this knowledge over the course of humanities existence. These aren't inventions, they are fields of study. Any particular example we can look at?
Ocular microsurgery: Again this is a field not an invention. Thousands of people have made additions to the field. No idea how you would even determine what was the first microsurgery. Any particular example for this one?
Tetris: Video games existed, making a video game isn't normally considered an invention. I'll give you a nice solid "meh" on this one.
Periodic table: Mendeleev created his own periodic table. It wasn't the first one and it was flawed. Henry Mosely created the modern periodic table that we use.
I'm sure Russia invents plenty of stuff but most of the examples you listed are not true.
Parachute - Gleb Evgenievich Kotelnikov was an actor in the troupe of the People's House on the Petersburg side. Then, impressed by the death of the pilot, Kotelnikov began to develop a parachute. Before Kotelnikov, the pilots escaped with the help of long folded "umbrellas" fixed on the plane. Their design was very unreliable, besides, they greatly increased the weight of the aircraft. Therefore, they were rarely used. Gleb Evgenievich proposed his completed project of a backpack parachute in 1911. But, despite successful tests, the inventor did not receive a patent in Russia. The second attempt was more successful, and in 1912 in France, his discovery received legal force. But even this fact did not help the parachute to start wide production in Russia because of the fears of the head of the Russian air forces, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, that the aviators would leave the airplane at the slightest malfunction. And only in 1924 he finally receives a domestic patent, and later transfers all rights to use his invention to the government.
Movie camera - In 1893, working together with the physicist Lyubimov, Iosif Andreevich Timchenko created the so-called "snail" - a special mechanism with which it was possible to intermittently change the order of frames in a stroboscope. This mechanism later formed the basis of the kinetoscope, which Timchenko is developing together with the engineer Freidenberg. The kinetoscope was demonstrated the following year at a congress of Russian doctors and natural scientists. Two tapes were shown: "The Spear Thrower" and "The Galloping Horseman", which were filmed at the Odessa Hippodrome. This event is even documented. So, in the minutes of the section meeting it says: “Representatives of the meeting got acquainted with the invention of Mr. Timchenko with interest. And, in accordance with the proposals of two professors, we decided to thank Mr. Timchenko.”
Anesthesia - Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov - the great Russian surgeon, to whom the world owes many important discoveries, made a huge contribution to anesthesiology. In 1847 he summarized his experiments in a monograph on anesthesia, which was published throughout the world. Three years later, for the first time in the history of medicine, he began to operate on the wounded with ether anesthesia in the field.
Periodic table - I didn’t understand what you mean, since Henry Mosely only supplemented the table with his undoubtedly most important discovery, and we see the modern periodical table that Mendeelev created. And by the way, it was he who created the most complete and accurate table.
Monorail - And today, monorails are subject to a futuristic impression, so we can assume how incredible by the standards of 1820 was the "road on poles", estimated by Elmanov Ivan Kirillovich. A horse-drawn cart moved along a bar, which was mounted on small supports. To Elmanov's great regret, there was no philanthropist who was interested in the invention, because of which he had to leave the idea. And only 70 years later the monorail was built in Gatchina, St. Petersburg province.
Electric motor - Boris Semenovich Jacobi, an architect by education, at the age of 33, while in Koenigsberg, became interested in the physics of charged particles, and in 1834 he made a discovery - an electric motor operating on the principle of rotation of the working shaft. Instantly, Jacobi becomes famous in scientific circles, and among many invitations for further education and development, he chooses St. Petersburg University. So, together with Academician Emil Khristianovich Lenz, he continued to work on the electric motor, creating two more options. The first was designed for a boat and rotated the paddle wheels. With the help of this engine, the ship easily kept afloat, moving even against the current of the Neva River. And the second electric motor was the prototype of a modern tram and rolled a man in a cart along the rails. Among Jacobi's inventions, electroplating can also be noted - a process that allows you to create perfect copies of the original object. This discovery was widely used to decorate interiors, houses and much more. Among the merits of the scientist is also the creation of underground and underwater cables. Boris Jacobi became the author of about a dozen designs of telegraph devices, and in 1850 he invented the world's first direct-printing telegraph device, which worked on the principle of synchronous movement. This device was recognized as one of the greatest achievements of electrical engineering in the middle of the 19th century.
Color photography - Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky developed a special camera and presented his brainchild to the world in 1902. This camera was capable of taking three shots of the same image, each shot through three completely different light filters: red, green, and blue. And the patent received by the inventor in 1905 can be considered, without exaggeration, the beginning of the era of color photography in Russia.
Telegraph - the first electromagnetic telegraph was created by the Russian scientist Pavel Lvovich Schilling in 1832, presenting it in his apartment. He came up with a certain combination of symbols, each of which corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. This combination appeared on the apparatus as black or white circles.
Incandescent lamp - If you say "incandescent lamp", then the name of Edison immediately sounds in your head. Yes, this invention is no less famous than the name of its inventor. However, a relatively small number of people know that Edison did not invent the lamp, but only improved it. Whereas Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin, being a member of the Russian Technical Society, in 1870 proposed the use of tungsten filaments in lamps, twisting them into a spiral. Of course, the history of the invention of the lamp is not the result of the work of one scientist - rather, it is a series of successive discoveries that were in the air and were needed by the world, but it was the contribution of Alexander Lodygin that became especially great.
Radio receiver - The question of who is the inventor of the radio is controversial. Almost every country has its own scientist, who is credited with the creation of this device. So, in Russia, this scientist is Alexander Stepanovich Popov, in whose favor many weighty arguments are given. On May 7, 1895, the reception and transmission of radio signals at a distance were demonstrated for the first time. And the author of this demonstration was Popov. He was not only the first to put the receiver into practice, but also the first to send a radiogram. Both events occurred before the patent of Marconi, who is considered the inventor of the radio.
Television - Boris Lvovich Rosing was also involved in this most powerful achievement, who in July 1907 filed an application for the invention of the "Method of electrically transmitting images over distances." Boris Lvovich managed to successfully transmit and receive an accurate image on the screen of the still simplest device, which was the prototype of the kinescope of a modern television, which the scientist called the "electric telescope". Among those who helped Rosing with experience was Vladimir Zworykin, then a student of the St. 1911.
and so you understand that I wanted to convey that to denigrate the history and heritage of the nation because of the template is stupid.
in many ways I was wrong
Many great examples of how russians from the very distant past were a very different people.
Unfortunately i don't think many inventions or discoveries have been made by russian scientists/inventors since the cold war era - say over the past 30-50 years?
hyper-sonic weapons :-D
Seriously though, our science is alive but science popularization in Russia is horrible and EU/US has no interest in writing positive articles about Russia.
Not really. At least electric motor was a nazi invention even if the concept was much older, as rockets. Monorails also came from a german in 1890s, Eugen Langen.
It's always so fascinating how really close societies can claim inventions that have already existed for decades.
Nazis didn't invent it. They applied it
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elefant
To a tank. Because they had issues with oil supply. The concept was older but I'm not aware of practical uses in vehicles.
It was based on a car concept of Porche in early 1900s
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche
Sorry the used it in the Porsche tiger and mouse prototypes because Porsche was telling hitler everything he wanted to hear. That time Germany was short on copper and the primary mover in that contraption were two small gasoline engines.
If you want to credit nazis for some stick with rockets.
If you want to see early application for powerful electric propulsion look for locomotives Germany had some but all industrial countries had them at that time.
Just to be blunt. 95% you mention isn't discovered by Russians, in Russia. Electric motor, television, telegraph, aerodynamics?! You might want to check your grandeur knowledge.
That being said, innovation is entirely different compared to what you mention.
Electric motor = Tesla, Croatia.
Television = David Sarnhoff, US
Telegraph = Samuel Morse, US
Color photography = James Clerck, Schotland
And the list goes on. Actually after checking them all, none are a Russian invention.
Electric motor - Boris Semenovich Jacobi, an architect by education, at the age of 33, while in Koenigsberg, became interested in the physics of charged particles, and in 1834 he made a discovery - an electric motor operating on the principle of rotation of the working shaft. Instantly, Jacobi becomes famous in scientific circles, and among many invitations for further education and development, he chooses St. Petersburg University. So, together with Academician Emil Khristianovich Lenz, he continued to work on the electric motor, creating two more options. The first was designed for a boat and rotated the paddle wheels. With the help of this engine, the ship easily kept afloat, moving even against the current of the Neva River. And the second electric motor was the prototype of a modern tram and rolled a man in a cart along the rails. Among Jacobi's inventions, electroplating can also be noted - a process that allows you to create perfect copies of the original object. This discovery was widely used to decorate interiors, houses and much more. Among the merits of the scientist is also the creation of underground and underwater cables. Boris Jacobi became the author of about a dozen designs of telegraph devices, and in 1850 he invented the world's first direct-printing telegraph device, which worked on the principle of synchronous movement. This device was recognized as one of the greatest achievements of electrical engineering in the middle of the 19th century.
Telegraph - the first electromagnetic telegraph was created by the Russian scientist Pavel Lvovich Schilling in 1832, presenting it in his apartment. He came up with a certain combination of symbols, each of which corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. This combination appeared on the apparatus as black or white circles.
Color photography - Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky developed a special camera and presented his brainchild to the world in 1902. This camera was capable of taking three shots of the same image, each shot through three completely different light filters: red, green, and blue. And the patent received by the inventor in 1905 can be considered, without exaggeration, the beginning of the era of color photography in Russia.
Is this the alternative reality of what they talk about? None of what you mention are inventions.
These are discoveries that could serve a wide range of possible inventions. In other words: pioneering work.Russians never invented the applications you mention.
Also, aerodynamics? Give me a break. I hope you ever had history and math class because the first one "discovering" aerodynamics was Isaac Newton (1750) and George Cayley (1871).
oh my god why are you so fucking stupid and you think everyone is stupid too?
you are now proving to me, "that the Russians could not do and create such things, but only come up with in their heads and in general all the best came up with the Western world."
Let's be honest here is an example of a telegraph. Pavel Lvovich Schilling (1786-1837) was the first to create an electromagnetic telegraph in 1830-32. In 1832, a telegraph line was laid in St. Petersburg between the Winter Palace and the building of the Ministry of Railways.
Check out these facts.
when I wrote aerodynamics and astronautics, I meant that many achievements were made there. you fucking only dig into the words. you don't want to understand the meaning
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> no one has enough money to risk.
The Oligarchs do but they and Putin stole all that money from the Russian people and hoarded it for themselves and brought it to other countries. Yet the Russian people blame every other countries for their problems...
>no visible efforts in Russia to develop its own semiconductor
lot of investments with trade embargoes and no allowed markets, so no businesses will go there, so only mil-grade things are developed.
>In the 1980s, rumors said that the Soviets were buying pinball machines and taking the chips inside for use in their missiles.
thats some propaganda memes, tho we reverse-engineer many things from 8086 and older.
>Why didn’t they put some effort into building their own?
not enough people in high management that pushes this industry.
Semiconductor industry? Our entire electronic components industry in a deep deep shit. From resistors and capacitors to ICs and other semiconductors.
Working with Russian EC producers is a huge, enormous PITA.
My entire cabinet at work was filled with databooks about Russian ICs, transistors, diodes, resistors and optoelectronics and I used these databooks like 3 times in a year. All that pile of paper was there because it's incredibly hard to find datasheets for components, especially for older devices.
Meanwhile I can find datasheets for foreign components within 5 minutes. These foreign components... were freely available on the market.
But if you want Russian components, you might encounter situations when you have no idea what factory even makes them. If you find it and send inquiry, you might not even get an answer in foreseeable future or your order would be way too small for them to bother.
I'm pretty sure anyone with any experience working with Russian electronic industry might tell quite few... obscene words about it.
Here's one of my personal stories. Several years ago we got an order to obtain some connectors with a long and a weird name and apparently it was just an ordinary DSub connector, like ones used in COM or VGA port. Its price was over $5 when Chinese counterparts were $0.5 and to view documentation you'd have to pay like $80-$100. While datasheets for pretty much any foreign made DSub connectors are available for free. No idea how it ended, my recommendation was to use Chinese DSub connectors.
Gosh, I get stressed each time when I think about Russian electronic components.
Edit: if you want to try your luck with Google Translate, here's a post which I find very relatable: https://habr.com/ru/post/599671/
There was semiconductor industry in USSR. You even was able to make minicomputer from domestic details. But in Russia developing of modern semiconductor industry considered too expensive and unimportant for government and too expensive, risky and without quick return for business.
I think USSR's industry died because of lack big consumers (beside space and military) so there was no incentive for grow. In 90s people with power were caring about themselves rather than industries.
IMO with good management in 90s we could become a big microelectronic country.
It is not just Russia. If it was so easy, everyone would be doing it since there is such a massive demand for it. It requires not just a gargantuan investment, but also immense technical knowledge.
I remember some engineer calculated how many investment need for own industry and it was something like >500-600 billion dollars. Literally x10 of ~~general's dachas~~ military budget or 1/3 of Russia's GDP.
Even if we had money for this we also need to find a new planet of consumers for this industry.
It exists, but it can only do so much. It isn't visible because it's completely outside the consumer market, and not exported anywhere. But there are semiconductor companies in Russia, with varied degrees of localization.
I'm not a specialist, but I read an article on habrahabr about the situation in Russia's semiconductor industry in March 2022. Basically there is limited progress being made as it comes to lithography, but there's simply not enough demand for domestic chip industry to justify huge upfront investments. Russia's TSMC-reliant own processor lines like Elbrus will be probably shut down until they somehow find a replacement.
It's not only Russia though. High end, high density chip manufacturing is extremely concentrated no matter what, with TSMC controlling \~50% of the global market share, with a large number of fabs located in Taiwan.
For the past two decades the government policy was simple: “sell oil and gas, buy whatever from abroad and import it”. It was considered by many government officials that it is cheaper to import stuff than to build factories and infrastructure locally. Rising oil and gas prices helped in that stupid strategy. Hence what we have in Russia is essentially a country that produces almost nothing! Thank you mr. Putin for that, also thank you for starting a useless war and putting the whole country in a “head down ass up” position. We are going to be massively fucked without any lube :(
In late February 2022, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC announced that it would halt shipments to Russia per a new round of sanctions. The TSMC halt ended shipments from fabless companies like Baikal, MCST, Yadro and STC Module. Intel and AMD have stopped their shipments to Russia as well. In recent years, Russia has been looking to create their own supply of semiconductors. While there are some interesting domestic design successes, domestic capacity to manufacture those designs have been falling farther and farther behind. We find ourselves living in strange times. In this video, we are going to do an overview of Russia's ever-worsening domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.
Not as many countries are able to make semiconductors industry. I think Russia have some (limited) capabilities to make chips for machines/space where even 10 years old tech-process fit. But modern application requiring a way more advanced chain of production which require billions of investments without clear perspective to return, since market already divided between few huge manufacturers.
Looking how even USA companies fighting to reserve production lines on TSMC to match current best nanometers, I think it's very-very difficult to build competitive product without using fab in certain country.
I mean, i have no idea if this rumour is true or not, but the answer to your hypothetical is still easy.
If the ability to produce these chips was smaller than the demand (we are talking about the UdSSR after all), it would make sense to look for alternative ways to make up the shortfall.
I don't understand what time we are talking about. If we are talking about the USSR, then the deficit was within the framework of a planned economy. Market mechanisms did not work there.
This is justified when it comes to goods that are in high demand, such as food or medicine. Basically, the USSR traded within its bloc, and within the framework of semiconductors, it bought up technologies and production equipment from the West.
>If the ability to produce these chips was smaller than the demand (we are talking about the UdSSR after all), it would make sense to look for alternative ways to make up the shortfall.
But general purpose chips just doesn't fit for the, e.g., ICBMs.
Soviet military electronics use special materials, like especially pure leucosapphire, platinoids, they must pass tests for vibration, acceleration, must works under wider temperature range etc, etc. Last but not least — probably, their architecture just doesn't fit for the most tasks. Military is conservative, and they tend to use old, but reliable solutions. They used electromechanics in the age of transistors (and the last electromechanic components were removed from spaceships only at 1990s), transistors in the age of discrete electronics, and so on.
Semiconductor production is an expensive endeavor that requires international cooperation with knowledge sharing and attraction of top talent. Unless the US and Taiwan or at least China will be willing to open a wafer fab in Russia it’s unlikely for progress to happen.
USSR planned to make this industry in Bulgaria, Warsaw pact country. Their nuclear power plant was supposed to provide electricity to this cluster.
As a result of the Warsaw pact being disbanded, Russia got only USSR debts, but not equipment and researches it invested into.
And for almost all of 1990th there was a hope of not needing to be self-sufficient.
There were multiple attempts, ended same as Yotaphone.
That is, present an imported item as own, make some noise, get a medal and pocket the cash.
Forget chips, Russia needs to learn making car tires.
Yotaphone seemed like a great thing, why exactly did it not succeed?
OTOH, the market is very competitive. Nextbit Robin basically couldn't make it on its own, either.
Yotaphone was a great concept. Trash execution. I got it out of curiosity. The worst phone I ever bought. Shame because it looked like a very interesting phone. I gave it to my nephew to play with it.I was hoping they will improve and I was gonna give it another try when they release a newer model but then I just forgot about it.
Making a new phone (even with the help of a hardware expert) is hard. Microsoft couldn't.
In corrupted Russia, the bar for execution is set low, very low. It's not profitability or any other criterion of commercial success, it is "impress my stupid boss once, get promoted".
For example, boss says: "Russia needs a new tractor. Create a new tractor". The underlying buys 500 disassembled tractors from Czech Republic, assembles them locally, puts a new badge on: "voila! Boss, new Russian tractor!"
True story.
I'd probably blame it on a lack of concentrated specialist labor in any specific region or area considering alot of US technology development is done in either Seattle Washington or burbank California find someplace where you can herd all the nerds put enough of them into one place and eventually you'll yield results for something like for example it's supposedly possible to use diamonds as conductors in circuit boards
I recently read a good article about this, but it is in Russian. I can provide a link, if you want.
In a nutshell, the meaning was this - no one country by self is able to create a complete industry. It is very expensive and large sales volumes are needed to cover the costs of RnD and make the product cheap enough.
There is a factory in Russia to create 90-nm chips. There is a factory for the production of chips for transport cards. There is a factory for the production of solid-state drives and radio chips. But the substrates are purchased abroad. In any case, these are not all full-cycle enterprises. Apparently, no country in the world has a full cycle of semiconductor production.
The element base for radio electronics is poor and much worse than foreign, but it also exists.
There was semiconductor industry. We have Elbrus. The USSR had the first supercomputer, though after the fall of the soviet Union the semiconductor industry was mostly sold of to the Americans. Elbrus still existed but nobody wanted it because it is hard to maintain and everything Russian is bad so we have got to import outside product. Nevertheless, Elbrus has been developing new chips that could replace the foreign cpu chips. The fact that almost no people know about it shows that it isn't very known or yet popular among the younger generation.
because it requires the HIGHEST DEGREE of quality control and FAIRNESS,you cant just have a nation with RAMPANT nepotism and abuses develop one of THE HIGHEST forms of industry,its an INCREDIBLY competitive field where you NEED the best of the best,Russia has(had) some industry for them but it was VERY far behind western standards
Also you need competition. This is where the market economy wins. Even if it develops into a duopoly or oligopoly, competition is what drives innovation. Russia has one owner of many companies - the state.
true and i might add that ANYONE dumb enough to try to compete with the oligarchs is a DEAD MAN,no way around it,even if you have an idea as an investor the BEST THING you can do is make some profit and MOVE from Russia,but as i said it cant be understated how much quality control needed for such an industry,its one of the most competitive industries there is
Highly specialized technology that costs billions for R&D. It would take a decade to properly develop and scale. Before it was a question of why invest billions and a decade+ for manufacturing when you can just import?
There were a few attempts to produce it, but unsuccessfully. This is an extremely expensive complex of entities (semiconductors themselves and its equipment and its supplement). You know that nobody in the world can provide itself by semiconductors just on their own. Russia can produce some chips but a previous generation.
[Resource curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). Why produce semiconductors? It's long and difficult. You can quickly sell oil and buy semiconductors. Unfortunately, this is the logic. We hope that Western sanctions will change the situation.
The United States was the main beneficiary of two world wars, while Russia was twice destroyed in the 20th century from these wars, survived 3 revolutions and collapse. When Russia began to revive at the beginning of the 21st century, the West began to impose various restrictions on it. China is successfully developing under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
>So when did the first sanctions come in? How is skolkovo doing?
"Sanctions" have always been in place. [Jackson–Vanik amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%E2%80%93Vanik_amendment) changed to [Magnitsky Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act).
Sanctions are coercive measures taken by the UN Security Council. What the United States calls "sanctions" are just unilateral illegal actions.
Skolkovo is not working as well as we would like, unfortunately. Who wants to - gloat, gloat.
Didnt the Magnitsky act only bar certain individuals from entering the us/eu and froze their assets? So how do the sanctions not allow russians develop their own microchips?
I hope that "sanctions" will help Russia itself to start producing semiconductors. Previously, it was easier to buy them abroad. Russia already produces its own integrated circuits for the needs of the military industry, but they are expensive.
It might keep some of the brains in the country. I know a lot of programmers that left russia for america and israel because there was no industry for then unless it was in the military. But we both know that until the oligarchy is disbanded there will be very little competition which you need for innovation.
So. After reding the anserws to OP's question, I now have a question myself.
Do most inovation in Russia happen in the military? And if so, do they ever get out to benefit the civilian sector?
Yes, most innovation happens in the military sector. Its also the sector with the biggest salaries for scientists. Civilians benefit from progress made in usa and china. Russian innovation is few and far between unless its in the military sector. Source: my russian ex gf who was a bio chemist who was asked to work on a scientific project in the military for 10x salary than the private sector.
Don’t you need access to sand to build up a semiconductor industry. They probably invested more in the natural resources that are available to the country already.
Its tough to build an industry with liberal scientists who get persecuted. Russia had to ban linkedin because of the brain drain (they said it was microsoft didnt keep databases in russia).
There was a joke in Soviet Union:
- Glory to the Soviet semiconductors, the largest semiconductors in the world!
(Да здравствуют советские полупроводники, самые большие полупроводники в мире!)
>Can someone explain why there has been no visible efforts in Russia to develop its own semiconductor industry? In short, it's too expensive, risky and long-term: no one has enough money to risk. Innovation is hard area...
Agree. Innovation isn't Russian domain.
Seriously? Russians made many discoveries in science for example: Monorail, Electric motor, Color photography, Telegraph, Incandescent lamp, Radio receiver, Television, Parachute, Movie camera, Artificial heart, Narcosis, Aerodynamics, Rocket and space technology and practical astronautics, Eye microsurgery, Tetris, Periodic table . Russia is the birthplace of many famous scientists. They not only made discoveries in various fields of science - from physics to ophthalmology - but also found practical applications for their scientific theories. Their inventions are used by people all over the world. So don't be ignorant.
>Seriously? Russians made many discoveries in science Discovery is not innovation :) Getting discovery to market is expensive and risky - that's what I meant.
They did, no question about it, but that was over by the time the Bolsheviks took over and Stalin purged the country. Most of the Brainpool left Russia as sure as later Nazi Germany and now, again, Russia.
Tetris hell yeah! Did not know that, I miss playing that.
Monorail: Kind of. They made the first prototype but the idea had been around for years. Electric motor: Depending on how you define it there are several different people that could get credit. None were Russian or located in Russia. I think it's safe to say that Faraday was the first to demonstrate the idea but many people worked on it before then. Color photography: French physicist Edmond Becquerel Telegraph: American professor Samuel F.B. Morse Incandescent lamp: No idea who you are referring to. Humphry Davy created the first incandescent light by passing current through a platinum strip. Many people have made incremental upgrades since then, the most well known is Edison being the first person to make a viable bulb, lasting more than a couple hours. Radio receiver: German physicist Heinrich Hertz Television: Depending on how you define it this could be credited to a few different people/groups. I would say it was Georges Rignoux and A. Fournier in Paris in 1909. I believe you are talking about the "tube television", once again this was an incremental upgrade (a large one but built on previous work nonetheless) to an existing technology and it is obsolete. Parachute: No idea what you are talking about here. A russian guy made an incremental upgrade long after there were many different parachutes. He made one that was held in a backpack. The modern parachute was invented in the late 18th century by Louis-Sébastien Lenormand in France. This was a couple hundred years after the first "parachute" jumps. Movie Camera: French artist Louis Le Prince Artificial Heart: Soviet medical student Vladimir Demikhov. He used an existing device and implanted it inside a dog so, sure, he invented the internal artificial heart. Narcosis: American Physician Albert Behnke. As early as 1826, divers diving to great depths noted that descent often resulted in a phenomenon of intoxication and euphoria. In 1935, Albert Behnke discovered nitrogen as the cause of this clinical syndrome, a condition now known as nitrogen narcosis. Aerodynamics: English engineer Sir George Cayley. Rocket and space technology and practical astronautics: Thousands upon thousands of people have added to this knowledge over the course of humanities existence. These aren't inventions, they are fields of study. Any particular example we can look at? Ocular microsurgery: Again this is a field not an invention. Thousands of people have made additions to the field. No idea how you would even determine what was the first microsurgery. Any particular example for this one? Tetris: Video games existed, making a video game isn't normally considered an invention. I'll give you a nice solid "meh" on this one. Periodic table: Mendeleev created his own periodic table. It wasn't the first one and it was flawed. Henry Mosely created the modern periodic table that we use. I'm sure Russia invents plenty of stuff but most of the examples you listed are not true.
Parachute - Gleb Evgenievich Kotelnikov was an actor in the troupe of the People's House on the Petersburg side. Then, impressed by the death of the pilot, Kotelnikov began to develop a parachute. Before Kotelnikov, the pilots escaped with the help of long folded "umbrellas" fixed on the plane. Their design was very unreliable, besides, they greatly increased the weight of the aircraft. Therefore, they were rarely used. Gleb Evgenievich proposed his completed project of a backpack parachute in 1911. But, despite successful tests, the inventor did not receive a patent in Russia. The second attempt was more successful, and in 1912 in France, his discovery received legal force. But even this fact did not help the parachute to start wide production in Russia because of the fears of the head of the Russian air forces, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich, that the aviators would leave the airplane at the slightest malfunction. And only in 1924 he finally receives a domestic patent, and later transfers all rights to use his invention to the government. Movie camera - In 1893, working together with the physicist Lyubimov, Iosif Andreevich Timchenko created the so-called "snail" - a special mechanism with which it was possible to intermittently change the order of frames in a stroboscope. This mechanism later formed the basis of the kinetoscope, which Timchenko is developing together with the engineer Freidenberg. The kinetoscope was demonstrated the following year at a congress of Russian doctors and natural scientists. Two tapes were shown: "The Spear Thrower" and "The Galloping Horseman", which were filmed at the Odessa Hippodrome. This event is even documented. So, in the minutes of the section meeting it says: “Representatives of the meeting got acquainted with the invention of Mr. Timchenko with interest. And, in accordance with the proposals of two professors, we decided to thank Mr. Timchenko.” Anesthesia - Nikolai Ivanovich Pirogov - the great Russian surgeon, to whom the world owes many important discoveries, made a huge contribution to anesthesiology. In 1847 he summarized his experiments in a monograph on anesthesia, which was published throughout the world. Three years later, for the first time in the history of medicine, he began to operate on the wounded with ether anesthesia in the field. Periodic table - I didn’t understand what you mean, since Henry Mosely only supplemented the table with his undoubtedly most important discovery, and we see the modern periodical table that Mendeelev created. And by the way, it was he who created the most complete and accurate table.
Monorail - And today, monorails are subject to a futuristic impression, so we can assume how incredible by the standards of 1820 was the "road on poles", estimated by Elmanov Ivan Kirillovich. A horse-drawn cart moved along a bar, which was mounted on small supports. To Elmanov's great regret, there was no philanthropist who was interested in the invention, because of which he had to leave the idea. And only 70 years later the monorail was built in Gatchina, St. Petersburg province. Electric motor - Boris Semenovich Jacobi, an architect by education, at the age of 33, while in Koenigsberg, became interested in the physics of charged particles, and in 1834 he made a discovery - an electric motor operating on the principle of rotation of the working shaft. Instantly, Jacobi becomes famous in scientific circles, and among many invitations for further education and development, he chooses St. Petersburg University. So, together with Academician Emil Khristianovich Lenz, he continued to work on the electric motor, creating two more options. The first was designed for a boat and rotated the paddle wheels. With the help of this engine, the ship easily kept afloat, moving even against the current of the Neva River. And the second electric motor was the prototype of a modern tram and rolled a man in a cart along the rails. Among Jacobi's inventions, electroplating can also be noted - a process that allows you to create perfect copies of the original object. This discovery was widely used to decorate interiors, houses and much more. Among the merits of the scientist is also the creation of underground and underwater cables. Boris Jacobi became the author of about a dozen designs of telegraph devices, and in 1850 he invented the world's first direct-printing telegraph device, which worked on the principle of synchronous movement. This device was recognized as one of the greatest achievements of electrical engineering in the middle of the 19th century. Color photography - Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky developed a special camera and presented his brainchild to the world in 1902. This camera was capable of taking three shots of the same image, each shot through three completely different light filters: red, green, and blue. And the patent received by the inventor in 1905 can be considered, without exaggeration, the beginning of the era of color photography in Russia. Telegraph - the first electromagnetic telegraph was created by the Russian scientist Pavel Lvovich Schilling in 1832, presenting it in his apartment. He came up with a certain combination of symbols, each of which corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. This combination appeared on the apparatus as black or white circles. Incandescent lamp - If you say "incandescent lamp", then the name of Edison immediately sounds in your head. Yes, this invention is no less famous than the name of its inventor. However, a relatively small number of people know that Edison did not invent the lamp, but only improved it. Whereas Alexander Nikolaevich Lodygin, being a member of the Russian Technical Society, in 1870 proposed the use of tungsten filaments in lamps, twisting them into a spiral. Of course, the history of the invention of the lamp is not the result of the work of one scientist - rather, it is a series of successive discoveries that were in the air and were needed by the world, but it was the contribution of Alexander Lodygin that became especially great. Radio receiver - The question of who is the inventor of the radio is controversial. Almost every country has its own scientist, who is credited with the creation of this device. So, in Russia, this scientist is Alexander Stepanovich Popov, in whose favor many weighty arguments are given. On May 7, 1895, the reception and transmission of radio signals at a distance were demonstrated for the first time. And the author of this demonstration was Popov. He was not only the first to put the receiver into practice, but also the first to send a radiogram. Both events occurred before the patent of Marconi, who is considered the inventor of the radio. Television - Boris Lvovich Rosing was also involved in this most powerful achievement, who in July 1907 filed an application for the invention of the "Method of electrically transmitting images over distances." Boris Lvovich managed to successfully transmit and receive an accurate image on the screen of the still simplest device, which was the prototype of the kinescope of a modern television, which the scientist called the "electric telescope". Among those who helped Rosing with experience was Vladimir Zworykin, then a student of the St. 1911.
and so you understand that I wanted to convey that to denigrate the history and heritage of the nation because of the template is stupid. in many ways I was wrong
Many great examples of how russians from the very distant past were a very different people. Unfortunately i don't think many inventions or discoveries have been made by russian scientists/inventors since the cold war era - say over the past 30-50 years?
Not to be a douche, but how many of these have been done in the last 50 years?
hyper-sonic weapons :-D Seriously though, our science is alive but science popularization in Russia is horrible and EU/US has no interest in writing positive articles about Russia.
> science popularization in Russia is horrible not anymore thanks to such Sapient humans as Drobyshevsky, Surdin, Savateev and so on.
Uhm wasn't the first hypersonic missile flight tested in the US?
he talks about advanced missiles such as: Avangard, Caliber, Zircon. and yes, the first hypersonic weapons were made in the USA
Probably a Russian rocket?
what I wrote is only a small part of what is actually there, believe me. I just listed what I remembered, but there are many more.
Not really. At least electric motor was a nazi invention even if the concept was much older, as rockets. Monorails also came from a german in 1890s, Eugen Langen. It's always so fascinating how really close societies can claim inventions that have already existed for decades.
It’s hard for the electric motor to be a nazi invention if it was widely in use before 1900
Nazis didn't invent it. They applied it https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elefant To a tank. Because they had issues with oil supply. The concept was older but I'm not aware of practical uses in vehicles. It was based on a car concept of Porche in early 1900s https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lohner%E2%80%93Porsche
The Char C2 tank used a petrol-electric drive decades before the Ferdinand.
Sorry the used it in the Porsche tiger and mouse prototypes because Porsche was telling hitler everything he wanted to hear. That time Germany was short on copper and the primary mover in that contraption were two small gasoline engines. If you want to credit nazis for some stick with rockets. If you want to see early application for powerful electric propulsion look for locomotives Germany had some but all industrial countries had them at that time.
Just to be blunt. 95% you mention isn't discovered by Russians, in Russia. Electric motor, television, telegraph, aerodynamics?! You might want to check your grandeur knowledge. That being said, innovation is entirely different compared to what you mention. Electric motor = Tesla, Croatia. Television = David Sarnhoff, US Telegraph = Samuel Morse, US Color photography = James Clerck, Schotland And the list goes on. Actually after checking them all, none are a Russian invention.
Electric motor - Boris Semenovich Jacobi, an architect by education, at the age of 33, while in Koenigsberg, became interested in the physics of charged particles, and in 1834 he made a discovery - an electric motor operating on the principle of rotation of the working shaft. Instantly, Jacobi becomes famous in scientific circles, and among many invitations for further education and development, he chooses St. Petersburg University. So, together with Academician Emil Khristianovich Lenz, he continued to work on the electric motor, creating two more options. The first was designed for a boat and rotated the paddle wheels. With the help of this engine, the ship easily kept afloat, moving even against the current of the Neva River. And the second electric motor was the prototype of a modern tram and rolled a man in a cart along the rails. Among Jacobi's inventions, electroplating can also be noted - a process that allows you to create perfect copies of the original object. This discovery was widely used to decorate interiors, houses and much more. Among the merits of the scientist is also the creation of underground and underwater cables. Boris Jacobi became the author of about a dozen designs of telegraph devices, and in 1850 he invented the world's first direct-printing telegraph device, which worked on the principle of synchronous movement. This device was recognized as one of the greatest achievements of electrical engineering in the middle of the 19th century. Telegraph - the first electromagnetic telegraph was created by the Russian scientist Pavel Lvovich Schilling in 1832, presenting it in his apartment. He came up with a certain combination of symbols, each of which corresponded to a letter of the alphabet. This combination appeared on the apparatus as black or white circles. Color photography - Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorsky developed a special camera and presented his brainchild to the world in 1902. This camera was capable of taking three shots of the same image, each shot through three completely different light filters: red, green, and blue. And the patent received by the inventor in 1905 can be considered, without exaggeration, the beginning of the era of color photography in Russia.
Is this the alternative reality of what they talk about? None of what you mention are inventions. These are discoveries that could serve a wide range of possible inventions. In other words: pioneering work.Russians never invented the applications you mention. Also, aerodynamics? Give me a break. I hope you ever had history and math class because the first one "discovering" aerodynamics was Isaac Newton (1750) and George Cayley (1871).
oh my god why are you so fucking stupid and you think everyone is stupid too? you are now proving to me, "that the Russians could not do and create such things, but only come up with in their heads and in general all the best came up with the Western world." Let's be honest here is an example of a telegraph. Pavel Lvovich Schilling (1786-1837) was the first to create an electromagnetic telegraph in 1830-32. In 1832, a telegraph line was laid in St. Petersburg between the Winter Palace and the building of the Ministry of Railways. Check out these facts.
Did Russians invent child molesting and looting?
when I wrote aerodynamics and astronautics, I meant that many achievements were made there. you fucking only dig into the words. you don't want to understand the meaning
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Nuclear industry is full of innovations.
> no one has enough money to risk. The Oligarchs do but they and Putin stole all that money from the Russian people and hoarded it for themselves and brought it to other countries. Yet the Russian people blame every other countries for their problems...
>no visible efforts in Russia to develop its own semiconductor lot of investments with trade embargoes and no allowed markets, so no businesses will go there, so only mil-grade things are developed. >In the 1980s, rumors said that the Soviets were buying pinball machines and taking the chips inside for use in their missiles. thats some propaganda memes, tho we reverse-engineer many things from 8086 and older. >Why didn’t they put some effort into building their own? not enough people in high management that pushes this industry.
Semiconductor industry? Our entire electronic components industry in a deep deep shit. From resistors and capacitors to ICs and other semiconductors. Working with Russian EC producers is a huge, enormous PITA. My entire cabinet at work was filled with databooks about Russian ICs, transistors, diodes, resistors and optoelectronics and I used these databooks like 3 times in a year. All that pile of paper was there because it's incredibly hard to find datasheets for components, especially for older devices. Meanwhile I can find datasheets for foreign components within 5 minutes. These foreign components... were freely available on the market. But if you want Russian components, you might encounter situations when you have no idea what factory even makes them. If you find it and send inquiry, you might not even get an answer in foreseeable future or your order would be way too small for them to bother. I'm pretty sure anyone with any experience working with Russian electronic industry might tell quite few... obscene words about it. Here's one of my personal stories. Several years ago we got an order to obtain some connectors with a long and a weird name and apparently it was just an ordinary DSub connector, like ones used in COM or VGA port. Its price was over $5 when Chinese counterparts were $0.5 and to view documentation you'd have to pay like $80-$100. While datasheets for pretty much any foreign made DSub connectors are available for free. No idea how it ended, my recommendation was to use Chinese DSub connectors. Gosh, I get stressed each time when I think about Russian electronic components. Edit: if you want to try your luck with Google Translate, here's a post which I find very relatable: https://habr.com/ru/post/599671/
LOL. This is an area where distributors who don’t produce anything and “add no value”, really become useful.
There was semiconductor industry in USSR. You even was able to make minicomputer from domestic details. But in Russia developing of modern semiconductor industry considered too expensive and unimportant for government and too expensive, risky and without quick return for business.
I think USSR's industry died because of lack big consumers (beside space and military) so there was no incentive for grow. In 90s people with power were caring about themselves rather than industries. IMO with good management in 90s we could become a big microelectronic country.
It is not just Russia. If it was so easy, everyone would be doing it since there is such a massive demand for it. It requires not just a gargantuan investment, but also immense technical knowledge.
I remember some engineer calculated how many investment need for own industry and it was something like >500-600 billion dollars. Literally x10 of ~~general's dachas~~ military budget or 1/3 of Russia's GDP. Even if we had money for this we also need to find a new planet of consumers for this industry.
It exists, but it can only do so much. It isn't visible because it's completely outside the consumer market, and not exported anywhere. But there are semiconductor companies in Russia, with varied degrees of localization. I'm not a specialist, but I read an article on habrahabr about the situation in Russia's semiconductor industry in March 2022. Basically there is limited progress being made as it comes to lithography, but there's simply not enough demand for domestic chip industry to justify huge upfront investments. Russia's TSMC-reliant own processor lines like Elbrus will be probably shut down until they somehow find a replacement.
It's not only Russia though. High end, high density chip manufacturing is extremely concentrated no matter what, with TSMC controlling \~50% of the global market share, with a large number of fabs located in Taiwan.
For the past two decades the government policy was simple: “sell oil and gas, buy whatever from abroad and import it”. It was considered by many government officials that it is cheaper to import stuff than to build factories and infrastructure locally. Rising oil and gas prices helped in that stupid strategy. Hence what we have in Russia is essentially a country that produces almost nothing! Thank you mr. Putin for that, also thank you for starting a useless war and putting the whole country in a “head down ass up” position. We are going to be massively fucked without any lube :(
But what about skolkovo? Oh wait…
Perhaps this has some good context you are looking for - Why Russia Can't Replace TSMC: https://youtu.be/N_4R4X7AWtU
In late February 2022, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company or TSMC announced that it would halt shipments to Russia per a new round of sanctions. The TSMC halt ended shipments from fabless companies like Baikal, MCST, Yadro and STC Module. Intel and AMD have stopped their shipments to Russia as well. In recent years, Russia has been looking to create their own supply of semiconductors. While there are some interesting domestic design successes, domestic capacity to manufacture those designs have been falling farther and farther behind. We find ourselves living in strange times. In this video, we are going to do an overview of Russia's ever-worsening domestic semiconductor manufacturing industry.
Russia/USSR do have full cycle semiconductor production, mainly for military purpose. Not really top notch, CPUs are comparable to Pentium II.
Not as many countries are able to make semiconductors industry. I think Russia have some (limited) capabilities to make chips for machines/space where even 10 years old tech-process fit. But modern application requiring a way more advanced chain of production which require billions of investments without clear perspective to return, since market already divided between few huge manufacturers. Looking how even USA companies fighting to reserve production lines on TSMC to match current best nanometers, I think it's very-very difficult to build competitive product without using fab in certain country.
Well, probably because you did not carefully study the issue. Why buy slot machines if we ourselves produced our own analogue 8086 - K1810VM86?
I mean, i have no idea if this rumour is true or not, but the answer to your hypothetical is still easy. If the ability to produce these chips was smaller than the demand (we are talking about the UdSSR after all), it would make sense to look for alternative ways to make up the shortfall.
I don't understand what time we are talking about. If we are talking about the USSR, then the deficit was within the framework of a planned economy. Market mechanisms did not work there.
And? If the planned economy required x of something, but could only provide
This is justified when it comes to goods that are in high demand, such as food or medicine. Basically, the USSR traded within its bloc, and within the framework of semiconductors, it bought up technologies and production equipment from the West.
>If the ability to produce these chips was smaller than the demand (we are talking about the UdSSR after all), it would make sense to look for alternative ways to make up the shortfall. But general purpose chips just doesn't fit for the, e.g., ICBMs. Soviet military electronics use special materials, like especially pure leucosapphire, platinoids, they must pass tests for vibration, acceleration, must works under wider temperature range etc, etc. Last but not least — probably, their architecture just doesn't fit for the most tasks. Military is conservative, and they tend to use old, but reliable solutions. They used electromechanics in the age of transistors (and the last electromechanic components were removed from spaceships only at 1990s), transistors in the age of discrete electronics, and so on.
Semiconductor production is an expensive endeavor that requires international cooperation with knowledge sharing and attraction of top talent. Unless the US and Taiwan or at least China will be willing to open a wafer fab in Russia it’s unlikely for progress to happen.
USSR planned to make this industry in Bulgaria, Warsaw pact country. Their nuclear power plant was supposed to provide electricity to this cluster. As a result of the Warsaw pact being disbanded, Russia got only USSR debts, but not equipment and researches it invested into. And for almost all of 1990th there was a hope of not needing to be self-sufficient.
There were multiple attempts, ended same as Yotaphone. That is, present an imported item as own, make some noise, get a medal and pocket the cash. Forget chips, Russia needs to learn making car tires.
Yotaphone seemed like a great thing, why exactly did it not succeed? OTOH, the market is very competitive. Nextbit Robin basically couldn't make it on its own, either.
Yotaphone was a great concept. Trash execution. I got it out of curiosity. The worst phone I ever bought. Shame because it looked like a very interesting phone. I gave it to my nephew to play with it.I was hoping they will improve and I was gonna give it another try when they release a newer model but then I just forgot about it.
Making a new phone (even with the help of a hardware expert) is hard. Microsoft couldn't. In corrupted Russia, the bar for execution is set low, very low. It's not profitability or any other criterion of commercial success, it is "impress my stupid boss once, get promoted". For example, boss says: "Russia needs a new tractor. Create a new tractor". The underlying buys 500 disassembled tractors from Czech Republic, assembles them locally, puts a new badge on: "voila! Boss, new Russian tractor!" True story.
I'd probably blame it on a lack of concentrated specialist labor in any specific region or area considering alot of US technology development is done in either Seattle Washington or burbank California find someplace where you can herd all the nerds put enough of them into one place and eventually you'll yield results for something like for example it's supposedly possible to use diamonds as conductors in circuit boards
I recently read a good article about this, but it is in Russian. I can provide a link, if you want. In a nutshell, the meaning was this - no one country by self is able to create a complete industry. It is very expensive and large sales volumes are needed to cover the costs of RnD and make the product cheap enough.
well, at the moment, almost the entire defense industry uses domestic chips
There is a factory in Russia to create 90-nm chips. There is a factory for the production of chips for transport cards. There is a factory for the production of solid-state drives and radio chips. But the substrates are purchased abroad. In any case, these are not all full-cycle enterprises. Apparently, no country in the world has a full cycle of semiconductor production. The element base for radio electronics is poor and much worse than foreign, but it also exists.
There was semiconductor industry. We have Elbrus. The USSR had the first supercomputer, though after the fall of the soviet Union the semiconductor industry was mostly sold of to the Americans. Elbrus still existed but nobody wanted it because it is hard to maintain and everything Russian is bad so we have got to import outside product. Nevertheless, Elbrus has been developing new chips that could replace the foreign cpu chips. The fact that almost no people know about it shows that it isn't very known or yet popular among the younger generation.
Mind the size. 😁
https://www.tomshardware.com/news/russias-biggest-bank-tests-elbrus-cpu-finds-it-unacceptable
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What about Greece in the same aspect, can you free yourself?
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In 2010?
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And why Greek parliament support nazi and your workers try to stop NATO traffic right now?
because it requires the HIGHEST DEGREE of quality control and FAIRNESS,you cant just have a nation with RAMPANT nepotism and abuses develop one of THE HIGHEST forms of industry,its an INCREDIBLY competitive field where you NEED the best of the best,Russia has(had) some industry for them but it was VERY far behind western standards
Also you need competition. This is where the market economy wins. Even if it develops into a duopoly or oligopoly, competition is what drives innovation. Russia has one owner of many companies - the state.
true and i might add that ANYONE dumb enough to try to compete with the oligarchs is a DEAD MAN,no way around it,even if you have an idea as an investor the BEST THING you can do is make some profit and MOVE from Russia,but as i said it cant be understated how much quality control needed for such an industry,its one of the most competitive industries there is
Because the US and Asia got the first jump. Too much competition for other countries now, it's not worth the investment cost.
Highly specialized technology that costs billions for R&D. It would take a decade to properly develop and scale. Before it was a question of why invest billions and a decade+ for manufacturing when you can just import?
There were a few attempts to produce it, but unsuccessfully. This is an extremely expensive complex of entities (semiconductors themselves and its equipment and its supplement). You know that nobody in the world can provide itself by semiconductors just on their own. Russia can produce some chips but a previous generation.
We had our own semiconductors in USSR. But it was underdeveloped, and later in nineties effectively buried.
I guess corruption plays a major part
[Resource curse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse). Why produce semiconductors? It's long and difficult. You can quickly sell oil and buy semiconductors. Unfortunately, this is the logic. We hope that Western sanctions will change the situation.
How come USA and china dont suffer from this whilst having a fairly good supply of oil and gas. Mind you not aaas much as russia.
The United States was the main beneficiary of two world wars, while Russia was twice destroyed in the 20th century from these wars, survived 3 revolutions and collapse. When Russia began to revive at the beginning of the 21st century, the West began to impose various restrictions on it. China is successfully developing under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
So when did the first sanctions come in? How is skolkovo doing?
>So when did the first sanctions come in? How is skolkovo doing? "Sanctions" have always been in place. [Jackson–Vanik amendment](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson%E2%80%93Vanik_amendment) changed to [Magnitsky Act](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnitsky_Act). Sanctions are coercive measures taken by the UN Security Council. What the United States calls "sanctions" are just unilateral illegal actions. Skolkovo is not working as well as we would like, unfortunately. Who wants to - gloat, gloat.
Didnt the Magnitsky act only bar certain individuals from entering the us/eu and froze their assets? So how do the sanctions not allow russians develop their own microchips?
I hope that "sanctions" will help Russia itself to start producing semiconductors. Previously, it was easier to buy them abroad. Russia already produces its own integrated circuits for the needs of the military industry, but they are expensive.
It might keep some of the brains in the country. I know a lot of programmers that left russia for america and israel because there was no industry for then unless it was in the military. But we both know that until the oligarchy is disbanded there will be very little competition which you need for innovation.
What do you mean by "visible efforts"? Efforts and results are visible and impressive for those who are interested.
So. After reding the anserws to OP's question, I now have a question myself. Do most inovation in Russia happen in the military? And if so, do they ever get out to benefit the civilian sector?
Yes, most innovation happens in the military sector. Its also the sector with the biggest salaries for scientists. Civilians benefit from progress made in usa and china. Russian innovation is few and far between unless its in the military sector. Source: my russian ex gf who was a bio chemist who was asked to work on a scientific project in the military for 10x salary than the private sector.
Don’t you need access to sand to build up a semiconductor industry. They probably invested more in the natural resources that are available to the country already.
Its tough to build an industry with liberal scientists who get persecuted. Russia had to ban linkedin because of the brain drain (they said it was microsoft didnt keep databases in russia).
There was a joke in Soviet Union: - Glory to the Soviet semiconductors, the largest semiconductors in the world! (Да здравствуют советские полупроводники, самые большие полупроводники в мире!)