According to Business News outlet, Kommersant, The Ministry of Industry and Trade (Minpromtorg) in collaboration with IT market participants, are working towards creating a roadmap for the development of Computer-Aided Design (CAD) systems in microelectronics until 2030. The government plans to allocate funds to stimulate design centres to transition to domestic CAD systems.
Vladimir Dozhdev, the Director of Digital Technologies Department at Minpromtorg, informed Kommersant that T1, MIET, Rosatom, Rostech, and others are taking part in the roadmap development for Russian CAD systems in electronics and microelectronics. He stated, “Eight design routes have been identified, consisting of 136 elements and modules of CAD, necessary for development. Considering the work planned for 2024, over 70 of these tasks will be completed, providing basic functionality for at least five routes.”
According to him, former employees from foreign companies are among those working on the CAD systems. The roadmap outlines stages up to 2027 and 2030. Post these milestones, the state plans to stimulate Russian design centres to adopt domestic CAD systems. “We are working with all the major design centres and factories in Russia under which products will be developed in domestic CADs, we are also working through collaboration with friendly countries”, Dozhdev said.
CEO of T1, Alexey Fetisov, reported that his company is developing software for calculating electronic and microelectronic objects. In 2023, they received a five-year subsidy of 2.5 billion rubles from Minpromtorg for this venture.
“The development is occurring within the framework of ITC “Electronics and Microelectronics”, involving both our companies and partners,” said Maxim Valin, Rostec’s Director of Digital Transformation. According to a source, Rostec is developing a range of CAD systems partially through state funding and partially through its own funds.
Vice rector for innovative development at NIU MIET, Alexey Pereverzev, confirmed that university specialists are carrying out research and development work to create design elements for the digital route and to create tools for instrument-technological modelling.
Yaroslav Petrichkovich, the founder of NPC Elvis, said that the cost of developing a CAD system for microelectronics could amount to billions of dollars. He pointed out that Russian design centres currently use Synopsys and Cadence softwares, as these programs have libraries of parameters of key world factories, including TSMC. According to Petrichkovich, even with Russian CADs, design centres will continue to use foreign software because they are oriented towards foreign factories applying modern tech-processes (28 nm and below).
An unnamed source suggested that creating CAD systems together with China, which has qualified specialists and factories, is logical. The issue of qualified personnel was highlighted by deputy director of marketing at MCST (developers of the Elbrus processor), Konstantin Trushkin: “These are unique specialists and there are very few of them in Russia.” He added that MCST uses both foreign and domestic systems.
