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Hardware

More on the Russian E2K 99

Posted by CmdrTaco from the moscow-vs-intel dept.
volkris writes "Here's an article about the Russian chip, the E2K. It's the first I had ever heard about it, though later I went back and checked the article earlier this week about the Merced, the G4, and the E2K. This is just an overview of the chip. Looks interesting."
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More on the Russian E2K More

More on the Russian E2K

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  • Yeah, well the entire logic system was largely laid out by Greek philosophers, and since computers use formal logic (AND/OR/XOR/NOT), computers are therefore largely Greek in origin. Or not.
  • Posted by Bocharn:

    I hope they will get enough financing (it would not be bad even if money will come from the West. Knowing the falling apart Russian economy, there's no gov. money for such projects) and manufacture the chip.
  • Posted by Mr. Assembly:

    The say that it is a "paper design". Hey, that's like saying that because I hang out in a donut shop, I'm a cop.
    It's a good thing though. If they were to move away from their vacuum tube technology there would be nobody that our FAA could buy vacuum tubes from. We need to keep our air traffic system up and keep our airplanes from droppng out of the sky.
  • Posted by Nr9:

    SANT PYETYERSBORG TEKNOLOGICHESKIY UNIVERSITY RULZ
  • Seriously, there are a lot of very intelligent Russians, I'm the first to admit that but this just sounds a little too good to be true. Has anyone here visited Russia?


    'Father of Soviet supercomputing' !? Everything I have heard and seen said that Soviet Supercomputing was a smuggling operation. Bring in the fastest workstations they could get from the west. I just find it very hard to believe. Over the past few days this unheard of group has taken credit for inventing pipelining, superscaler chips, EPIC, parallel processing, and some compiler technology. Just a little too good to be true.


    Look at the efforts AMD, Cyrix, NexGen, etc. put in to cloning 486 and pentium chips, now some new group from a country that is practically third world is going to beat them to the punch with an IA64 design that is 2-3x faster?? There was a lot of top tallent, money and work put into just matching Intel's processor speed.


    It just doesn't smell right to me, they might have a design but their performance claims are lies. Their claims to have invented a lot of that technology are also suspect in my mind. This kind of thing has happened before, even Exponential boasted of inflated performance numbers, they didn't exactly take their investors money and run but they didn't deliver anything. They may have a top chip team but not good enough to beat Intel by that much, Intel (regardless of what you think of their products) has some brilliant designers.

  • Shall I continue?

    Sure. Why not? ;-)

    During WWII, Germany was the technologically leading nation in the world. Just think about the V2 (without Wernher von Braun there would be quite a lot less spacecraft, on either side! Also, the first American rockets were V2s, captured from the Germans. The Redstone was IIRC a direct descendant of the V2.)

    Think about the Me262 (or was it the Me163?! I keep mixing them...), a jet fighter ready for deployment in 1944/45! If the Allied Forces Forces hadn't destroyed most of the manufacturing plants by then they'd been in deep trouble!

    Radar was also developed by a German, but when he offered his invention to the German military, he was chased off. ("German fighter pilots need no stinking electric helpers!" or something along that lines...) So he went to the British...

    Shall I now continue?!? Enough rant...

    I may sound bitter, but I think it's quite good that Germany lost the war. But that's because of what the government did back then, not because of the tech. I just wanted to show that not everything came out of the US. (Wasn't Einstein born in Germany and chased off by the Nazis?! (I'm not sure...))

  • Either build the thing and prove your point, publish in a peer-reviewed journal rather than some hype-blurbs in Wired, or shut up. Until then, it's all just unfounded rumors.

    s/Wired/Slashdot
  • I'm an American, but I really dislike it when people go off spouting complete nonsense like this. To go and say that Russians are all liars and thieves is crap. Stop with the sweeping generalizations and get a clue.

    Do you honestly think the US has never told a lie? Do you think the US has never stolen technology or used foreign intelligence like you describe?

    The process of giving your enemy misleading information about your abilities and arsenals is called "counter-intelligence". That's right, it has a name. Every major nation does it. It's not like we all stood up and gasped when it was discovered that Russia was actually MISLEADING us. My God! They told a lie!

    Perhaps you should educate yourself about some of the stuff your own country does before you judge others.
  • Ah, but I think he's ahead of you there, he's attributing low educational standards to malice. :-)

    Daniel
  • Do you have a reference for your cold fusion claims?
  • I'd just like to point out that the vast majority of the technology in use today was created in United States-based universities.
  • Where is it?

    In short words, E2K is very different from other CPUs on the market. The other part of the core technology is a heavily optimizing compiler, which Elbrus people were developing for something like 10 years.

    Also what is interesting E2K will both interpretate & recompile IA32 programs (unlike Merced), putting them in E2K form back to the disk. Dont ask me how. Also UltraSparc CPU was developed with help of Babayan team, and in general his company has done a lot of work for Sun. Now they are maintaining SunOS, for example.
  • Lots of things look great in simulations.
    This is the most vaporous of Vaporware.
    I'm amazed anyone even noticed this stuff....

    I have a plan for world peace, eliminating
    hunger, ethnic conflict, overpopulation,
    old age, obesity and lonely Friday nights.

    Just waiting for funding and implementation.
  • Well... Which country launched the first satellite? Which country had the first human in space? You say that the US stand for peace, what about Chile, the US supported Pinochet, the US sold waepons the Iran when they where in war, killing civilians.

    What I want to say with this is:

    No country is "perfect", most countries does both bad and good things.
  • Yeah.... And we built your contry.
  • "Diefendorff said the Russian data indicates the
    E2k chip -- fabricated in a .18-micron process
    - would run at 1.2 GHz. By contrast, Diefendorff
    estimated that the Merced processor, fabricated
    in the same process, would run at 800 MHz, three times slower."

    WHAT? 1.2 GHz is 50% more than 800MHz.

    It's reporting like this that makes me doubt the rest of this article.

    Cum grano salis, friends.
  • US Elementary and Secondary education does lag, but the best universities in the world are in the US.

    MIT, CMU, CalTech, Berkely, Stanford, all the Ivies, zillions more. 'Course CMU's the best :)

    It's no surprise there are a lot of foreign nationals who come here for university. My friend Mathilde est d'origine francaise and she agrees, US universities are far better and more rigorous.
  • I recently heard a talk about NASA technology in the good old days.

    Apollo went to the moon on a slide rule as backup.

    There were some amusing situations. I think it was Skylab, had 2 machines duplicating all calculations. The first one that cought the other one in a difference turned it off -- hehe, no guarantee whether the right or wrong computer wins.

    Hell, the original incarnation of the shuttle had --you guessed it--IBM 360's. And ferrite core RAM. Wow.
  • If this isn't all hype, all the attention will surely bring someone in with some cash. The question is, will it be someone with the technology (lots of people suggest AMD. It would be farout) who can make this happen relatively quickly. (AMD is building a new fab in Dresden i think, i think it's even .18 u, get me if i'm wrong).

    But this will still be a chip competing against much later revision Merced's than the initial ones. This won't appear for 2-3 years at _best_.

    Anyone else notice Intel's initial chips suck? The first (was it klamath?) PII's were 66MHz frontside, the first pIII's don't have the new cache, the first Merced's aren't so hot either. Ohwell. Mmmmm, alpha.

    BTW I'm not that impressed by anything I've seen from AMD. Yeah, their K6's run applications ok. But I have yet to see a k6 w/a good FPU. I'm greedy. I want it all. I want nice caches AND a nice FPU. Give me a celeron450a :). Maybe k7 will be good.
  • I don't claim every university is excellent. And I certainly think that with few exceptions the best US universities are private (which just may be the secret, since most other countries don't even have a private university system).

    There are a hell of a lot of American state universities (at least 1 in each of 50 states), but most are at best mediocre, except perhaps in a few areas. There are still a couple of great state schools: UVA (go VA!, founded by TJ), UCBerkeley, UMichigan (aerospace), Georgia Tech. But the best ones are private.

    BTW the best public school I have seen, and one of the best overall right up there with CMU, MIT, etc. is Technion, the Israel Institute of Technology. Where you should speak Russian to get anywhere.
  • I have quite a number of friends with Celeron 450a's :) They're all very happy people.

    Unfortunately I understand the celeron went out of production a week ago last Thursday. There may be a few places w/one or two left, buy'em while you can.

    From what I've seen and heard (discounting unrelieable reports) Celeron366 will run at 464 or something but that's over I think an 83MHz bus, so the PCI is at 42MHz and no peripherals will work. The Celeron366 will not even POST at 550, don't bother :).

    Really a shame Intel had to kill that one, here we were getting something for nothing. My @$$ overclockers played no part in their decision to pull the chip. Grr.
  • I recall from the first article that the specint
    and specfp were both significantly higher than the clockrating would indicate. Perhaps that's where that 3x comes in?

    Either way, if the thing is real, some US company would make an enormous amount of money by buying up the rights to manufacture it. AMD, maybe? :)
  • Knowing the russion sence for 'community service', perhaps can we persuade them to GPL the chip-design.
    It would be a great way to expande the 'open source' idea into other field!
  • ...Nothing like an article about Russia (or any foreign country) designing some super cool sounding uber-technology to bring out the American nationalists in the crowd.

    - Darchmare
    - Axis Mutatis, http://www.axismutatis.net
  • Aha! No wonder I didn't recognize
    "Saharof". We spell it "Sakharov" over
    here.

    Point well taken. The Russians should be
    proud of their accomplishments, especially
    the technical ones.

    Then again, as an American, I may be a
    minority -- I know what the Battle of Kursk
    was, I've heard of Prof. Kolmogorov (chaos
    theory dude), and I know who Sergei Federov
    plays for. 8-)

    (ooh, a smiley. How uncool here. Well, bite me.)

    -----
  • Good volley. *Thwak!*

    Unlike most Americans, I know a thing or 2 about Russian history (liberal arts colleges with good technical departments *rule*).
    I've heard all about Nicholas, Alexandra, Rasputin, Lenin, Trotsky, Frunze, Dzerzhinsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Stalin, the kulaks,
    the kolkhozes and the harvests of sorrow, Kandinsky, Malevich, the Reds and Whites, the Purges, the Yezhovshchina, the Nazi-Soviet Non-aggression Pact, Stalingrad, Leningrad, the defense of Moscow, the Berlin Airlift, the Thaw, the Master and Margarita,
    Gagarin, the Doctors' Plot, Krushchev, etc. etc.

    Russia has a fascinating history and has many many interesting people within its borders.
    And they have many acheivements to their credit (not the least of which is
    saving the world from unspeakable evil).

    But I have to ask: Why is Russian history so.. well.. sad and awful?

    By comparison, Irish history reads like a day at the amusement park..

    -----
  • Russia has had many hundreds of years of culture
    that has produced some of the humankind's greatest
    writers, musicians, mathematicians, and
    scientists. Dostoevsky, Horowitz, Sakharov; just
    to name a few.

    They are more than capable of formulating such a
    chip design. Fabricating it is another matter.

    You ought to be careful to distinguish between
    Soviets and Russians. They are not the same.
    ---------------------------------
    "The Internet interprets censorship as damage,

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • I've been to russia and I know quite a few russians. True this is a very poor country right now, but you must have FORGOTTEN the sheer terror that they struck into the hearts of every american during the cold war. It was because the US had a valid fear that the Soviet union might be technically superior to the US. Many of them are smart, and They do more with less. In fact MOST OF THE WORLD does more with less. I wouldn't be suprised if the chip that they have presented is as good as they say if not better. You have WAY too much pride in american companies. During the cold war, We did just as many shady things as they did ( if not more ) my grandfather was in the government during that time, and he said that his worst fear was what those smart russian scientists had cooking in their lab. Of course it never comes to light in the USA, but many technological advances that Americans take credit for are Russian/Non US in origin. we wern't neccisarily always the innovators, we did our share of imitating as well. I think that you are just picking on russia while their down. In Russia, you can't afford to make blown up claims like you can in the US because the government would have your ass on a skewer if you came up short. More power to this Soviet company and I hope that they find funding.
  • I'm an american, and
    I think my foreign friend had a point
    your spelling stinks
    your history is substandard
    you ARE a moron
    and you do suck
    get a life
    get a real education.

  • As an american, If i could apologize for all americans, I would, but some really need to be taken out to pasture and shot. Many of us have such a one-sided view of history and everything else for that matter, that I seriously wonder if anyone knows WHAT THE F!@# is going on in the rest of the world. I am dreadfully ashamed that we as a 220 year old nation (the new kid on the block) try to tell civilizations that have existed for thousands of years how to conduct their every day lives. Forgive my fellow American's stupidity, but realize that there is A LOT more where that came from. Also realize that not all of us are that utterly stupid ( I'm talking about the thread that you replied to)
  • Not only is the US behind in math; judging by the AC to whose post I am replying, it is also behind in ENGLISH!

    My GOD man! The original Russian poster had better English skills than you do! When you stand up for your own country's educational system, make sure you do not embarrass it in the process.

    As for the accomplishments of the US, no one will dispute what you've said. However, the Russians were the first in space. They were the first with a permanent station out there. Does the name Tesla ring a bell? How about Sikorsky?

    Point being, every country has it's flashes of brilliance. The US has an incredible amount of resources, and this is why it attracts so many foreign students into it's graduate programs and it's think-tanks. It's a quality of life thing, nothing more, nothing less. This is the land of opportunity for people who are willing to work hard - and a land of welfare for those who are not.

    Americans are not genetically superior - as is implied in many "we're better" postings. That kind of thinking is what got the Germans in trouble. :)
  • Well, the Saturn V rocket, (The one that launched all Apollo moon missions, and Skylab) was designed exclusively with slide rules, as were the SR-71 and X-15, the fastest airplanes ever created.

    Hell, my calculator has more processing power and RAM than the space shuttle, and my watch has more than the Apollo lunar lander!

    Almost everything designed before 1975 was made using only a slide rule.

  • >While we all know Hz aren't directly related to processing power, 1.2 GHz is not 3x faster than 800 MHz.

  • 1) This design is most likely real. If it wasn't, they would be stupid to expect any funding just based on their claims. Not likely considering that they are professionals.

    2) It will get sufficient funding if its confirmed to be real. Not necessaritly from Russia or from US.

    3) Ok, its fast, its real, there are 2 questions left, how much time will it take to make and how expensive will it be? If it's 3x faster than merced but 10x more expensive, everybody will just get dual or quad merceds. BUT there's something worth considering here: design cost is alot less in Russia than it is in US right now. This may result in E2k actually being cheaper than Merced.

    This might be very cool in a few years..

    woot.. Simpsons time
  • Education in much of the US is excellent. I imagine that your 50th rating probably comes from some statistic on percentage of GNP spent on public higher education.

    Education is still a field where the USA is a leader. If you don't believe me, go to a major university and look around, you will see a great number of students who pay huge sums of money to attend US schools.

    Dude, you speak in ignorance. The "50'th place" figure is very real; it was based on some international testing of school (not university) students, so it reflects knowledge and not education spendings. However, I think it is old -- I believe US is somewhere in the teens right now (which is still pretty pathetic).
    Bottom line is, US public education sucks royally. As far as industrial countries go, it is very weak. US universities are good, but think -- people get to universities by acquiring a lot of knowledge in schools first.
    I go to a graduate school in a major university. I would guess that at the very least, 1/3 of students here are foreigners (and they do not pay any money to attend UMass). This, if anything, speaks detrimentally about the quality of US education -- it implies that US, rather that raise their own brains, steals them from other countries.

    As to Russians -- their academia IS one of the best, pity they don't have money to do what they can do so well. They have the knowledge and the ability, but not the money or the technology.
  • Russian language also does not have a word for sex, it was borrowed from the west ;-)

    English does not have a word for 'sex' either, 'sex' is borrowed from Latin through French -- unless you count 'fuck'. However, if you allow English to have 'fuck', then Russian has 'yebat'. QED.

    Did you know that in russian peasant is pronounced krestianin, very close to Christian. Why is that?

    I don't know -- but I am not convinced that the two are etymologically related. I wish I had a good Russian dictionary here...
  • Get some answers, from the source of the news.
    And it's in English, so don't bother that
    Russian guy in the next cubicle 8-)
  • Oops, forgot the URL :

    http://www.elbrus.ru/press/press_faq-2502.html
  • If you read the specs for the chip you'd see that the triple the speed factor comes from the Mips, not the clock speed.

    Aside from that, hell, I've been trying to find an investor for these guys. If we can get them going, not only will the chip rock, but it would be a hell of a profit.


    PDG--"I don't like the Prozac, the Prozac likes me"
  • Today's San Jose Mercury News [sjmercury.com] highlighted that a sytem with 2 Pentium III's would require a license if exported to certain countries. The production of the E2K outside of the US would demonstrate the flaw in export controls. The technology is not limited to the US.
  • this thing might actually exist... in theory at least.

    Let's take up a collection to start manufacturing them.


    d
  • JFYI:

    the clockrate does not measure the speed of a processor but (part of) its timing behaviour.

  • if you were educated you would have noticed long time ago that good education in a nation-wide sense can never be achieved by 'industrial' (=economic) approaches. if education is not free, it is not good but biased and limited.


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