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04/17/2020, Fri, 20:03, Moscow time
, Text: Denis Voeikov
A mini-PC has appeared in Russia on the domestic Baikal processor and with the Alt Linux Linux OS. Prototypes saw the light. The release of an industrial batch due to a pandemic was postponed until the fall of 2020. Promising customers are business and the public sector.
Mini PC on Baikal
As it became known to CNews, the Russian developer of electronics and robotics, Hamster Robotics completed the creation of a desktop compact computer in the mini PC form factor on domestic chips and with an operating system from the Russian Software Registry under the Ministry of Communications.
The dimensions of the new product, dubbed HR-MPC-1, are 115 x 115 x 35 mm. As a processor, the 28-nanometer Baikal-T1 (new name BE-T1000) of the Baikal Electronics company was used. For pre-installation, the Alt Linux OS of the Bazalt SPO company was chosen.
Both companies mentioned were partners of Hamster in the project. Baikal provided consulting services, Basalt SPO finalized the drivers of its OS for the computer.
One of the leaders of Hamster Roman Burmistrov noted in a conversation with CNews that the mini-PC is an initiative development at his own expense, without attracting grants, subsidies and external investments.
The product design and technical documentation for it were ready at the beginning of 2020. At the moment, the company has prototypes. In April-May, they will be available for testing by potential customers. The expected dates for the appearance of the first industrial batch, significantly shifted due to the coronavirus pandemic, are the autumn months of 2020
Hamster has its own production facilities in Zheleznodorozhny near Moscow. On them for specific projects, in a relatively short time, the company is ready to produce batches of products in excess of 10 thousand pieces.
Burmistrov conceptually considers HR-MPC-1 to be an analogue of computers of the well-known Intel productive desktop PC line of the NUC family (Next Unit of Computing). Such PCs do not take up much space, are easily transported, can be mounted on the back of the monitor and are able to communicate wirelessly with most peripherals. For full operation, an mSATA (or 2.5 ”SATA) form factor drive is separately connected to them.
Characteristics, price, potential customers
The processor used in the Hamster mini-PC has two superscalar cores P5600 MIPS 32 r5. Uses 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM. Power consumption is 5 watts.
The novelty is equipped with a Wi-Fi module; It has two 1 Gb Ethernet ports, two SATA 3.0 ports, a PCIe Gen.3 controller, USB 2.0, I2C, SPI, GPIO, UART, RS-232, RS-485, HDMI, DVI interfaces. The retail cost is approximately 25-30 thousand rubles.
In view of the latter circumstance, and also due to the fact that Russian OSs, and even more so processors, are still perceived by private users as completely exotic, Roman Burmistrov admits that, apparently, only corporate customers, including those from public sector – for them, domestic filling is an attractive factor, and not vice versa.
According to Burmistrov, it can be concluded that HR-MPC-1 had previously met at Rosatom and Russian Railways. Moreover, Hamster hoped to take part in the scandalous billionth tender of the railway monopolist for the supply of 15 thousand computers on domestic processors, although in the end for some reasons these plans had to be abandoned.
A Few Facts About Intel NUC
NUC was first introduced by Intel in 2013. The first generation was powered by Celeron Sandy Bridge processors, the second on Core i3 and Core i5 Ivy Bridge, the third used Haswell architecture.
At the beginning of 2017, the seventh NUC Baby Canyon family was introduced on Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 chips of the Kaby Lake-US generation with TDP from 15 W to 28 W. In March 2018, Intel introduced the NUC Hades Canyon on quad-core Intel Core Kaby Lake processors with the Radeon RX Vega M GH graphics chip.
In November 2019, CNews wrotethat Intel will immediately discontinue production of seven NUC models, and after February 2020 will cease their supply. Among them entered Crimson Canyon devices (NUC 8 Home) on the never-made 10-nanometer Cannon Lake processors.
At the end of January 2020 became knownthat Intel intends to develop the NUC line in the direction of increasing productivity while reducing overall power consumption and maintaining an ultra-compact form factor of 10 x 10 cm.
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