Why can Russia produce first-class weapons even though it doesn’t have high-end chips?

Latest update time：2020-03-22

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Ever since the news of the US blocking chip exports to China came out, chips have become a topic that everyone talks about frequently. Today, the editor saw an article talking about how Russia does not have high-end chips but can produce first-class weapons, so I sent it to share with you.

Why modern advanced weapons and equipment are increasingly dependent on high-end chips

What is a high-end chip? There is no strict definition or unified statement in the world. Nowadays, people generally refer to circuits integrated on silicon blocks. So high-end chips refer to digital logic circuits or special circuits that have made a qualitative leap on the basis of ordinary chips, that is, digital logic circuits or special circuits with higher integration, faster speed, stronger functions, and even on-site programming. Modern weapons and equipment widely used various chips as early as the 1990s. However, since the new century, we have entered the era of information warfare and network warfare, and the proportion of electronic equipment in weapon systems has increased rapidly, and the demand for high-end chips has also increased rapidly. Take the fifth-generation fighter F-35 of the United States as an example. It is called the world's first fighter designed entirely in accordance with the requirements of information warfare because it can achieve "seamless compatibility" with the current combat system of the US military.

During combat, the F-35 exists as a node in information warfare. The integrated electronic warfare system equipped on board is designed to maximize the pilot's ability to perceive the entire battlefield situation; its single-machine electronic warfare capability can even reach the performance of professional electronic warfare aircraft. Once a war breaks out, the F-35 can share information with all American weapons and equipment in the air and at sea in the US military's combat system. How does it do this? The authoritative foreign "Jane's Defense Yearbook" said that it "has chips all over its body"!

In the field of missiles, radars and aerospace defense weapons, the most commonly used high-end chips, in addition to the commonly used high-speed and high-precision ADC/DAC chips, are roughly three aspects. The first is the chip of the weapon computer itself. Especially for missile and aircraft computers, the requirements for chips are extremely strict. The second is the communication chip; it is the backbone of many weapon communication control centers. For example, the C2BMC in the US THAAD relies on it to achieve global networking. The third is the DSP (digital signal processing) and FPGA (field programmable gate array) chips that are widely used in US radars and have been repeatedly mentioned by the US Department of Commerce.

The main task of electronic equipment in modern weapon systems is to receive information, process it and quickly calculate it, and then output instructions to control the execution components. Taking modern radar as an example, its data rate is as high as dozens of times per second, which means that it needs to be calculated once every tenth of a second. Therefore, information processing chips are required to have real-time, fast, and large-capacity computing functions. The most commonly used algorithms at present are convolution operations and Fourier transforms.

Both operations involve a large number of iterative processes of multiplication and accumulation, and modern signal processing chips are the easiest to use. Modern signal processing chips have gone through five generations since their launch in 1982. They are very different from high-speed microprocessors in the past: first, they can complete 32-bit multiplication and accumulation operations in one instruction cycle, which only takes 1-2 nanoseconds; second, they are multifunctional and can be processed in parallel; third, they use the so-called "Harvard structure". It is a memory structure that separates program instruction storage from data storage. It has an independent address bus and an independent data bus, and the two buses are shared by the program memory and the data memory in a time-sharing manner. This overcomes the bottleneck of data flow transmission and greatly improves the operation speed.

As for FPGA, it contains a large number of gate circuits, making the chip more integrated, faster and more reliable. In particular, it has the ability to be reprogrammed (reconfigured) within the system, including programmable logic blocks, programmable I/O and programmable internal connections. As an information processing, FPGA has a tendency to replace DSP.

The vast majority of designers are users of chips, so of course they are "taking what is available". For example, in the case of FPGA or DSP, famous American FPGA manufacturers, such as Xilinx (Chinese name: Xilinx) and Altera, have established sales offices in China, with sufficient supply, comprehensive services, and even development tools ready for you. Every time a new model is launched, you will receive free training, which greatly facilitates your design work and can even make many "innovations". Of course, these companies make a lot of money, which is probably what some people call a "win-win situation". A senior academician said it well: many achievements now are based on the use of foreign chips; and they often claim to be the world's number one, isn't this "taking others' yesterday's things to dress up their own tomorrow"!

We can see from the S-300's publicly available data pictures (such as the S-300-2 system sold by Russia to Greece) that its fire control radar signal processing also uses FFT technology. Each radar range channel also realizes the Doppler velocity branch through FFT calculation. But Russia uses small-scale integrated circuits (ICs) to form it. One range channel has to be made into a cabinet, while the United States only needs an FPGA or DSP chip (and a high-speed and high-precision ADC/DAC chip) and a printed circuit board. Therefore, Russian electronic equipment often gives people a feeling of being stupid, large, and rough, and is often looked down upon by some domestic scholars. But Russia has its own way, which does not prevent its S-300 and S-400 from becoming world-class air defense missile systems.

Why can't we make chips like Americans?

I have never worked in the field of semiconductors and chips. I am not qualified to comment on current chip issues. But I can reflect some usage and opinions from the user's perspective. On April 18, 2018, the day after the United States announced the "ban on sales", the Institute of Computing Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held an expert roundtable meeting in Beijing. The title of the meeting was "Why can't we make chips like the Americans?" However, according to reports from reporters who attended the meeting, the experts discussed the meeting for a whole day, and there were many different opinions, but they still could not come up with a positive answer.

However, the meeting still reflected some important information. For example, an expert cited China's supercomputer as an example. It has won the first place in international competitions many times with the fastest computing speed. But according to the expert, the first six times all used American chips (Author's note: It should refer to the six consecutive championships of the "Tianhe-2" supercomputer, which used 80,000 Intel Xeon chips). After the US Department of Commerce decided to ban the sale of relevant chips to four relevant Chinese units in April 2015, the "Shenwei Taihu Light" supercomputer developed in 2016 was "equipped with domestically produced chips" (Author's note: It should be the domestically produced CPU "Shenwei 26010". Does the so-called "equipped" mean that part of it was used?). Finally, it won the championship again in the international competition with a floating-point computing speed of 9.3 quadrillion times per second. Therefore, the expert said that the "ban on sales" was also a catalyst, which made scientific researchers feel a sense of crisis and accelerated the development of China's independent chips to a certain extent.

As we all know, the chip industry is an industry that requires a lot of capital and talent investment in the early stage, and it is an industry with a relatively long investment return cycle. It also requires generations of perseverance, hard work, and iterative innovation to develop to today's peak. At the meeting, experts pointed out that almost all the current international semiconductor industry giants started in the 1970s and 1980s, and spent a long time and a huge amount of talent investment in exchange for today's technology accumulation. China's semiconductor industry unfortunately missed a golden age. After the reform and opening up, although we have also put in a lot of effort, and have also achieved remarkable achievements in the field of low- and medium-end chips. However, it is difficult to catch up with the United States in the development of high-end chips by relying on the market competition mechanism.

In the 1990s, some visionary scientists such as Ni Guangnan advocated independent core technology, and proposed to target the main core chips of the United States (such as Intel's Xeon) to overcome the technical difficulties of high-end chips; and proposed not to be afraid of repeated failures, and eventually win. However, some experts and economists believe that it is better to buy chips than to make them, which is the so-called "trade market for technology" theory; and say that there is no need to worry that the United States will easily give up such a huge market and huge profits as China. Some leaders who advocate market orientation are also concerned about large investments and risks. This makes China's chip industry regrettably miss an opportunity again.

Recently, a Taiwanese media published an article titled "Semiconductor Revelation on Both Sides of the Taiwan Strait", expressing a straightforward view on this issue. The article is about: Both sides of the Taiwan Strait attach great importance to the semiconductor industry and started at a similar level (at the same time, they introduced production lines from Japan's NEC and the United States' RCA). The mainland government's support for semiconductors far exceeds that of Taiwan. Semiconductor technology is a subject that requires hard work and long-term focus. Cutting-edge technology requires scientific and technological personnel to have a high degree of professionalism. But now, in terms of process and high-end integrated circuits, the mainland is indeed not as good as Taiwan. One of the reasons is that young scientific and technological personnel in the mainland are all in state-owned enterprises and have no sense of crisis. Naturally, there is no sense of urgency, and they are afraid of hardship. They don't need to go deep into the profound principles and key technologies. Some young people have a poor sense of professionalism and are keen to get rich as soon as possible. Some media have the habit of bragging and think they have long been the world's number one. The article finally proposes that "humbly learning and asking questions and long-term focus are the only way to success." The arguments put forward in this article are still objective and worth our consideration.

Looking at the current chip problem from the perspective of weapons and equipment, I always feel that some experts and scholars lack an important factor in their consideration, that is, "war preparedness". Americans regard chips as a kind of war preparedness material. Every time they impose sanctions and ban sales to us, they use the excuse of "national security". The current US grand strategy is to contain China. Can it allow a win-win situation between China and the United States to continue for a long time? This reminds us of the debate in the 1980s on whether my country should develop its own Beidou navigation system. Some scholars expressed opposition on the grounds that the whole world is using the US GPS, and it is expensive to develop Beidou. Even if it is built, it will not be able to compete with the United States in the future market. In addition, GPS cannot be turned off or encrypted, so the United States itself cannot use it. However, in some local wars after the 1990s and military exercises in some countries, the United States has targetedly turned off the relevant functions of GPS and launched encrypted interference, proving that the opinions of the comrades who advocated the launch of Beidou are correct.

Lessons learned from the backwardness of microelectronics and chip technology in the former Soviet Union and Russia

The reasons for the poor microelectronics technology and chip level of the former Soviet Union and Russia are complex. However, according to Russian documents, there are three main reasons: First, in the 1960s, the world shifted from electron tubes to semiconductors. The former Soviet leaders believed that semiconductors were far less resistant to nuclear radiation than electron tubes, and they strongly advocated the development of small electron tubes. This made the Soviet Union miss the golden opportunity from the beginning. Second, the Soviet Union promoted the "ternary system" (i.e. +1, 0, -1 instead of binary 1, 0) for a period of time, which was incompatible with the binary system generally promoted internationally, wasting a lot of time and energy. Third, in order to balance the interests of the member states, the former Soviet Union distributed the microelectronics industry to the member states. The disintegration of the Soviet Union led to the fragmentation of the semiconductor industry. In addition, Russia experienced a decade of economic shock, and its economic recovery was slow, and it was unable to fully revive its former glory. Therefore, directional errors in core technology issues often result in huge losses. Learning from others' experience can help us improve ourselves, and these lessons have enabled us to avoid repeating the same mistakes.

Why can Russia frequently launch world-class new weapons and equipment even though it does not have high-end chips?

Since the Ukrainian crisis in 2014, Russia has been subjected to rounds of sanctions from the West, but it has still been able to launch world-class new weapons in batches. For example, in terms of aerospace defense, the fifth-generation fighter Su-57 has been put into production, the fourth-generation air defense system S-400 has been put into service, the fifth-generation air defense system S-500 has successfully completed target shooting, and the new generation of strategic anti-missile system A-235 is on combat duty, etc. Western journalists exaggerated: Russia "frequently issued chilling reminders!" So some readers raised questions, Russia's basic industrial level is poor, and microelectronics technology has always been Russia's shortcoming. Russia has launched these world-class new weapons, but lacks world-class microelectronics technology and high-end chips. Russia also emphasizes self-reliance and basically does not use foreign components (the West also bans the sale of high-end electronic devices). How do Russian scientific and technological personnel resolve this contradiction?

In short, it is to rely on the idea of "independent innovation". More specifically, one is to rely on the design idea of "strengthening strengths and avoiding weaknesses" of scientific and technological personnel. Make full use of Russia's basic technical advantages in missile flight mechanics, inertial guidance technology and devices, engines, microwave vacuum technology, analog circuits, etc., rely on the wisdom of Russian scientific and technological personnel to make up for the shortcomings of digital technology. This kind of compensation is not a simple replacement, but an innovation. As the author once cited in the article "Chip Crisis", Russia uses a self-excited crystal oscillator as an intermediate frequency signal accumulation, and its volume is even smaller than that of an integrated circuit, which is a typical successful example. Russian scientific and technological personnel play to their strengths and avoid weaknesses. On the one hand, it is out of helplessness, but on the other hand, it has promoted new development and progress in analog circuit technology.

The second is to rely on the design concept of "system first" of scientific and technological personnel. The latter means that "the level of weapon components can be average, but the system level, including weapon system performance indicators and weapon reliability, must be first-class". For example, in the field of aerospace defense weapons, from Russian senior leaders to missile system chief designers, they clearly realize that Russia's basic industry is far inferior to that of the United States, and they should develop their own aerospace defense weapons in a pragmatic way. They have two unwritten design rules: one is that they cannot require weapon system indicators to surpass the United States in all aspects, or to be the world's first in every indicator. Russia does not have the strength to compete with the United States in all aspects. Therefore, we must grasp the main indicators, solve the main contradictions, and make the main indicators world-leading. Second, we cannot require all equipment and components in the system to be first-class, but require each equipment to innovate independently and try to make the best use of its strengths and avoid its weaknesses. The main pursuit is effectiveness, stability and high reliability, without deliberately pursuing the use of advanced components and advanced technology, and not caring about the appearance being a bit "stupid, big and rough". Then the chief designers will synthesize the main performance and world-class air defense missile weapon system. This unwritten rule is praised by some Western literature as the "golden rule" of Russian weapon research and development.

The author believes that this is very instructive for us. In the previous stage, my country's scientific and technological community showed a certain impetuous mood, that is, all walks of life wanted to catch up with the United States in all aspects, and claimed that many aspects had already or had long surpassed the United States. In fact, taking high-end chips as an example, we must admit that the gap between us and the United States requires long-term hard work to catch up. Even then, it is not conceivable that all high-end chips will catch up with the United States. In fact, it would be great if some major varieties catch up with or approach the world's first-class level. Of course, core technology must be mastered in our own hands. Weapon developers pursue world-class weapons, and they don't care whether the chips they use are the best in the world.

To achieve independent innovation, we must have the courage to innovate. For example, the design of the Russian S-300 system, their courage to innovate is still worth learning from. The first is the band selection. The American Patriot uses the C band. Russian technicians proposed to use the higher X band to further improve the performance of the radar. But it was very risky at the time. Not only was the development and supply of components difficult. There was no guarantee of the production of the "X-band large antenna near-field test system", a key debugging equipment required for phased array radar (it is required that the sampling head on the test frame of several meters in size move in three dimensions at any point, and the positioning accuracy is no more than one percent of the wavelength, that is, 0.3mm). But Russia dared to take the lead in occupying this technological high point, and was the first in the world to develop a large X-band near-field test system.

In addition, regarding the feeding method of phased array radar antennas, American scholars and engineers have always advocated the use of branch feeding (through a large number of cables or waveguide branches) and denied the space feeding method. However, Russian scientific and technological personnel have made major breakthroughs and successes in space feeding. At an international radar annual meeting at the beginning of this century, American radar expert Baden listened to the report of Russian chief engineer Yefremov and learned that space feeding had been officially adopted on the S-300. He praised the innovative spirit and perseverance of Russian scientific and technological personnel. He also made an interesting speech at the meeting:

Western phased array radar developers, who had been preoccupied with branch feed design since the 1960s, tended to ignore and reject this space feed approach…and by 1988 they were still complacent in thinking that space feed technology was not mature enough…The detailed course outline for phased array antenna development by the IEEEE in 1993-1994 did not even mention space feed arrays. This attitude of Western radar engineering left the development of space feed array technology entirely to Russian engineers, who were able to enter this blank area with great energy.

Since Russia's basic scientific research is very solid, we believe that as long as the Russian economy continues to improve, its microelectronics technology and high-end chip technology will have new development and take-off. Otherwise, low-level microelectronics technology may become a bottleneck for Russia to further develop information and network weapons. Therefore, we learn from Russia's experience in developing cutting-edge weapons, mainly learning their independent innovation and daring to innovate design ideas and spirit, rather than imitating their specific practices.

The road of "trading market for technology" is not feasible

The detours taken by China's microwave electron tubes and other core components also show that the road of "trading market for technology" is not feasible. In fact, the lessons learned from the ZTE incident are not the first time. In the 1980s and 1990s, when the United States, the Soviet Union and other countries were making great efforts to develop a new generation of microwave high-power electron tubes to equip a new generation of high-power radars, we emphasized the market economy, and closed down the unprofitable electron tube factories with great fanfare, and closed down the unpopular vacuum majors in universities (it is said that microwaves are harmful and vacuum materials are harmful). Some experts are worried about the lack of successors. In some people's minds, a seemingly plausible concept has formed: electron tubes are behind transistors, transistors are behind integrated circuits, and integrated circuits are behind chips. If necessary, you can spend money to buy them in foreign markets. It was not until the West strictly prohibited the sale of high-power microwave electron tubes to China that we realized it. Russian scientific and technological personnel are smarter than us in this regard. Their microwave vacuum technology level is very high and unique, and has played a major role in promoting the development of Russia's advanced weapons.

"With the joint efforts of patriotic scientists, China's chips will soon rise"

Every year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China holds the "China Integrated Circuit Industry Promotion Conference", and one of my students has attended it. After returning, he told us about the conference and the embarrassing situation of China's chip industry. In 2017, the output value of China's integrated circuit industry reached 500 billion yuan, accounting for about 11% of the global share, while Taiwan accounted for 16%. In terms of operating income, there is no mainland company among the top 20 semiconductor companies in the world, while Taiwan has three companies including TSMC. China imports US semiconductor products, mainly high-end chips, every year, which is 230 billion US dollars, which is comparable to the annual budget of our army. Several US chip giants have made a lot of money in the Chinese market without exception, but over the years, they have repeatedly used national security as an excuse to wield the intellectual property rights stick, banning the sale of this company and sanctioning that company, with the aim of strangling China's chip industry and keeping the core technology in their hands forever. According to my students, many scientific and technological personnel at the second meeting expressed their desire to get ready and do something big. There was also a group of returnees at the meeting. Some of them have been engaged in chip technology abroad for many years and want to use their expertise to serve the motherland. They also called on their colleagues who are still abroad not to miss the opportunity. They also put forward the slogan "Patriotic scientists work together and China's chips will soon rise" at the meeting. The competition in science and technology is ultimately a competition for talent. As long as the policy is right, talent is valued, and all forces that can be united are united, I believe that China's high-end chips will soon rise.

Source: Qiantang River Big Data

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