News Taiwan Restricts Russia, Belarus to CPUs Under 25 MHz Frequency

[Admin]

Taiwanese government effectively bans all high-tech exports to Russia and Belarus.

Taiwan Restricts Russia, Belarus to CPUs Under 25 MHz Frequency : Read more

 

[hotaru251]

sadly they'll just use other nations to get a hold of the newer tech.

 

[Eximo]

Don't knock a 25Mhz CPU either. You can make and do lots of things with those. Probably enough used smartphones and older cell phones in the country to harvest for years if they really needed chips for something. They have China right next door with domestic CPU and GPU production, not great stuff, but enough for most people's needs.

 

[BX4096]

sadly they'll just use other nations to get a hold of the newer tech.

It's still the right thing to do, and considering how eagerly China studies the Russian invasion for their own expansionist goals, is in Taiwan's own best interest as well. Let Putin's cronies worry where to get decent electronics in bulk at premium prices, and then we'll see how much of it will go to the Russian people instead of the chosen few.

Good news for the Russian abacus industry, though...

 

[derekullo]

To be fair we got to the the moon with a 2.048 Megahertz processor

 

[jeremyj_83]

Don't knock a 25Mhz CPU either. You can make and do lots of things with those. Probably enough used smartphones and older cell phones in the country to harvest for years if they really needed chips for something. They have China right next door with domestic CPU and GPU production, not great stuff, but enough for most people's needs.

In x86 desktop CPUs you need to go back to the 386 to get something that might not be regulated by this.

 

[Eximo]

If you are thinking of desktop CPUs and the like, sort of correct. There are many low power/low frequency alternatives to Intel and AMD that licensed x86. Z86, Via, and a few others.

Tons of DSPs, Programmable logic controllers, etc all in that rough frequency class.

I wouldn't be thinking of consumer grade hardware, as I mentioned they can get stuff like that through China. It would more things like high speed networking and a lot of other vital infrastructure that they might get immediately locked out of.

 

[USAFRet]

To be fair we got to the the moon with a 2.048 Megahertz processor

Mostly slide rules.

 

[Spuwho]

Coming soon to your favorite newsfeed:

News Item: A Russian underground datacenter is found to have networked over 400 M1 CPU based Apple computers for computation.

News Item: Russian warehouse raided for a power usage violation where over 150 NVidia GPU's were found.

News Item: A former Russian vodka factory was found to contain an undetermined number (estimated to be over 1000) of Raspberry Pi's hooked up in a mass of network, power and USB cables.

 

[hotaru.hino]

To be fair we got to the the moon with a 2.048 Megahertz processor

Running a real-time cooperative multitasking OS of sorts no less.

The AGC is an amazing piece of technology when you think about it.

EDIT: Some side research since I wanted to brush up a bit on the AGC tells me that it was actually running a pre-emptive real-time OS, or at least had a job scheduler that acted as such.

And there's also the famous instance during Apollo 11 when the lunar module was landing, the AGC was overtaxed due to some equipment glitches and instead of curling up and dying, it discarded non critical jobs and kept going.

 

[SunMaster]

The tech embargo in the 90s was quite effective. No doubt what Russia has coming for the upcoming decades will hit hard. Want to export sanctioned tech to Russia? Be prepared for the sanctions and reactions of the other countries sanctioning Russia.

 

[mdd1963]

25 MHz? Hello, 1990 again!

 

[russell_john]

Don't knock a 25Mhz CPU either. You can make and do lots of things with those. Probably enough used smartphones and older cell phones in the country to harvest for years if they really needed chips for something. They have China right next door with domestic CPU and GPU production, not great stuff, but enough for most people's needs.

The problem is China is about 10 years or more behind Taiwan in CPU and GPU production ..... They have absolutely NOTHING that can compete with the likes of AMD, Intel, Nvidia, ARM, Samsung etc. which are all based on Western owned IP .... TSMC may be based in Taiwan but it uses US IP for it's advanced nodes ..... Pretty much all Smartphones use ARM IP which is from Great Britain

 

[vern72]

There are some (most) 386s that are faster than 25MHz! I guess 286s are safe?

 

[adamboy64]

Just going to drive Russia into the hands of China, which is what all these sanctions are doing.

 

[Im__A__Blimp]

Russian kids be like: Hey Dad, you got any games on your PC? Parents: Sure son! We have a massive variety of games here!!! What would you like play? We've got minesweeper, solitaire, Quake, Duke Nukem, and we even have a first person shooter called Doom! Let's Play!!

 

[hotaru251]

The problem is China is about 10 years or more behind Taiwan in CPU and GPU production

wasnt their recent homegrown gpu aroudn 1060? thats only 6 yrs old.

 

[peachpuff]

lololol they can import super nintendos only, n64 is too fast 🤣

 

[Chung Leong]

It would more things like high speed networking and a lot of other vital infrastructure that they might get immediately locked out of.

I imagine there're tons of Huawei gears floating around in the secondary market, after the US pressured country after country into abandoning them.

 

[watzupken]

This is a retarded decision. If they want to ban, they might as well outright ban. Not to say that there is no use for 25 Mhz processors, but the point is that if you want to ban, then just do it. At the end of the day, Russia will just go to China for chips. Even if the Chinese chips are inferior, they are going to be more meaningful than a 25 Mhz chip.

 

[systemBuilder_49]

25 Mhz is early 1990s technology. But when you think for a moment, Stinger Missiles and probably Javelin missiles use 1980s and 1990s technology, so this ban doesn't hurt very much. Also China makes 1 Ghz CPUs (mediatek ARM cellphone chips) and they will probably sell all that they can make ...

So this is a symbolic zero-impact move.

 

[SunMaster]

25 Mhz is early 1990s technology. But when you think for a moment, Stinger Missiles and probably Javelin missiles use 1980s and 1990s technology, so this ban doesn't hurt very much. Also China makes 1 Ghz CPUs (mediatek ARM cellphone chips) and they will probably sell all that they can make ...

So this is a symbolic zero-impact move.

You don't do research, and other work, on the weapons themselves. It will hamper Russia, in the long run, in every aspect of modern computer use. The keyword is "in the long run". Russia (due to being part of the Soviet Union) was also subject to this prior to the iron curtain fall.

 

[kerberos_20]

Russian kids be like: Hey Dad, you got any games on your PC? Parents: Sure son! We have a massive variety of games here!!! What would you like play? We've got minesweeper, solitaire, Quake, Duke Nukem, and we even have a first person shooter called Doom! Let's Play!!

Quake wasnt really smooth on 25mhz, even doom struggled, unless you used very small window

 

[jeremyj_83]

Quake wasnt really smooth on 25mhz, even doom struggled, unless you used very small window

Duke 3D was pretty hit and miss on a 486 DX33. On a 386 DX25 it would have been much worse. Unless he was talking about the 2D side scroller Duke Nukem. That would be fine on a such slow hardware.

 

[3ogdy]

It is a step in the right direction, but I have yet to understand the actual effect of these measures.

What is this? A new game? Let's play Diplomacy 2022:

Oh, look, Taiwan doesn't sell chips to Russia.

Well, couldn't Russia order Taiwanese chips through China or other countries?