Russian Baikal Chip Production Abilities Crippled By Sanctions

Baikal isn’t a name many would be privy to but we have reported on the Russia-based chipmaker in the past. These days, the company is tasked with transforming silicon into chips for its home country but recent reports hint at trouble occurring on the production floor.

According to the business news outlet, Vedomosti, approximately half of the chips that were produced by Baikal recently were defective. The reason for the uptick in chip defect were due to the equipment not being configured correctly, as well as not having enough properly trained technicians.

But the biggest contributor to Baikal’s lack of QC is undoubtedly the sanctions, imposed by both the US and the UK, which came into effect almost immediately after Russia invaded Ukraine, back at the start of 2022. To alleviate the sting of said sanctions, the company is said to be planning to expand its packaging partners in-country, which includes names such as Milandra and Mikron, both based in Zelenograd.

The problem with this scenario is that, unlike Baikal, these packaging companies don’t have the chops to produce wafers of the 28nm fabrication class, which itself is already very archaic by comparison to the 5nm and 4nm fabs that major chipmakers like AMD and Intel and their fabs can produce.

Baikal notwithstanding, Russia had announced plans back in 2022, that it would become less dependent on Western technology, similar to what China also doing, at current. The nation said that it was going to invest US$38.3 billion to build a microelectronics industry, plus an additional US$5 billion in the development of newer fab nodes and an increase in production.

(Source: Vedomosti, Techspot, Tom’s Hardware)

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