The Russian invasion of Ukraine had significant consequences at the international level and provoked an unprecedented wave of sanctions against our neighbor in the Urals. These sanctions were primarily aimed at damaging the Russian economy, but also restrict your access to technology components which are the basis for both the development of computer systems and the production of advanced weapons.

We already know some of the keys to these sanctions, but thanks to information released today by the Taiwanese Ministry of Economy, we are a little clearer. how this country will restrict the export of products to Russia and also to Belarus. If anyone is interested in why this last country is affected, the answer is simple, because from the first minute it cooperated with Russia in the invasion of Ukraine.

Taiwanese products blocked in Russia and Belarus: practically everything

It is the easiest and fastest way to describe the list of blocked products for both countries that the Taiwanese government has published. In practice all high-tech equipment made in this countryincluding anything that leaves the TSMC facility and anything that is located in facilities that use components from Taiwanese companies.

On the other hand, exports to Russia and Belarus semiconductor manufacturing tools, which means that even if they wanted to, no country could start working with the right equipment to make its own chips at advanced nodes.

As for semiconductors, Taiwan will allow Russia and Belarus to buy solutions which meet the following conditions:

• that his performance do not exceed 5 GFLOPs. For information, I remind you that the Dreamcast had a performance of 1.4 GFLOPs and that the first Xbox reached 20 GFLOPs.
• They shouldn’t work at 25 MHz or higher. Today, even the cheapest processors are in the 4,000 MHz band.
• They can only contain 32-bit ALU.
• Chips that use more than 144 pins are also prohibited.
• Time-delayed semiconductors on their logic gates more than 0.4 nanoseconds.

Russia is facing a complicated situation because of all the sanctions it has received, as it threatens to lead it not only into a major economic but also a technological recession. Think about what all this means for a country that it does not have access to advanced semiconductors and must use solutions that, given their strength and capabilities, are more than two decades old. It’s like going back 20 years.

We will see how it all ends and what path Russia will eventually take to try to minimize the impact of sanctions. It’s not easy for them, that’s for sure, but this country has already started working to improve its own semiconductor industry and could to manufacture its first 28nm chips in 2030as we told you then in this article.