Since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Western countries punish the aggressor. Today, we can see that Russian companies can no longer obtain sufficient supplies of semiconductors. The country is immersed in a real technological crisis.
Russia can no longer source semiconductors
The sanctions imposed by the alliance of Western countries have the effect of creating bottlenecks in the supply of semiconductors, electronic equipment and even for the components necessary for the proper functioning of the country’s data centers. Most major chipmakers (Intel, Samsung, TSMC and Qualcomm) ceased operations in Russia entirely. European, British and American companies are no longer allowed to export their products to the aggressor.
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Unsurprisingly, this strategy quickly showed its effects. There are no more chips available in Russia. The sanctions have thus created a shortage among car manufacturers, manufacturers of household appliances and even among the military equipment industry. The supply of advanced semiconductors, those used in consumer electronics and in advanced computer hardware, has also been greatly reduced. In short, the country’s ability to import foreign technologies has been considerably reduced. The country turned to China for semiconductor supplies with the x86 processor.
This situation will have lasting effects on the country’s economy.
These unprecedented sanctions force Russia to “structural transformation” painful to its economy. As the country is no longer able to export its own products, including raw materials like gas, economists expect Russia’s GDP drops 15% this year. According to several experts, this technological crisis is likely to have very serious and lasting effects on the Russian economy. Even though Russia only consumes 1% of the world’s semiconductors, tech companies are stuck.
Under the impetus of the Kremlin, the few national companies specializing in the manufacture of chips, namely JSC Mikron, MCST and Baikal Electronics, are trying to find solutions. MCST said it was considering to transfer its production to Russian factories belonging to JSC Mikronwhere she could create “worthy processors with sovereign Russian technology”. However, Russian technologies are not yet ready. Last year, Sberbank, a very large Russian bank, said about MCST’s chips that their memory, processing and bandwidth capacity were much lower than those developed by Intel.