They were unable to even produce the elemental base, which lags behind Western counterparts by several generations.
The Russian manufacturer of integrated circuits "Baikal Electronics" has failed to establish the production of domestic Baikal M processors due to a "shortage of components in the market," said the company's CEO Andrey Evdokimov to Kommersant. This chip, presented back in October 2019, is based on ARM architecture and was supposed to be produced using a 28 nm topology (the manufacturing process for modern laptops, smartphones, and tablets uses a 3 nm technology). Initially, it was intended to be produced at the facilities of Taiwanese TSMC, but after the start of the war in Ukraine in 2022, the company ceased cooperation with firms from the Russian Federation.
According to Evdokimov, this concerns the cessation of a three-year experiment on the packaging of Baikal M (the final stage of creating the chip, when the die is placed in a protective casing with external leads for connection to the board) at the GS Nanotech facility in Gusyev, Kaliningrad region. "There are currently no chips or they are insufficient to assemble the processors and distribute them to partners. Therefore, we did not proceed with the development of the experiment, there was no opportunity. Overall, I assess it positively and believe it was a step forward," commented the CEO of Baikal Electronics. In August, a consortium of data storage system developers reported that by the end of 2025, the manufacturer plans to supply several tens of thousands of Baikal-M and Baikal-L processors to Russian companies.
Sergey Plastinin, CEO of GS Nanotech, which produces printed circuit boards, diodes, and other electronics, noted that at the final stage of the Baikal M packaging experiment, the company was able to achieve 74–85% of usable products, which is a "worthy" result. According to him, to raise this share to 98%, many more chips are needed. The enterprise was assembling "only dozens" of domestic processors per month, Plastinin explained.
"We are talking about processors that lag behind Western counterparts by several generations and, therefore, are used in very specific areas," said Timofey Khoroshev, leader of the technology consulting practice and partner at the auditing company DRT. He also noted that Baikal M represents a "niche product" that is mainly of interest to government structures and is not involved in market mechanisms.
Earlier, Baikal Electronics noted that Baikal M could find application in personal computers, microservers, multimedia equipment, network communications, and other areas. This chip received the status of an integrated circuit of domestic production in 2020. This status confirms the possibility of the product based on this processor participating in government procurement.
