At the Microelectronics 26 forum in Sochi, Russian chipmakers demonstrated homegrown processor designs using retro games as a visual proof of function. The event, covered by Tom's Hardware via photos from RISC-V enthusiast Dmitrii Kuznetsov, included systems built around Baikal Electronics, Elvis, and MCST parts. A previous government effort to create a high-end gaming console was not represented at the show.
Baikal Electronics brought a BE-U1000 microcontroller, a 32-bit RISC-V chip with three CloudBear cores: two BR-350s at 200 MHz and one BM-310 at 100 MHz. It has 256 KB of flash and 192 KB of SRAM, plus USB 2.0, I2C, I2S, UARTs, and 48 GPIO lines in a 10x10 mm QFN-88 package. The part is aimed at robotics, automation, IoT, and sensors. Demonstrations included a business-card-sized console and an "Ushka" console styled after the original NES, running Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers.
Elvis showed the Hypercom-U SoC, which combines four Arm Cortex-A53 cores at up to 1.2 GHz with dual ELcore-50 DSPs, a PowerVR GE8300 GPU, and dedicated video, image, and navigation blocks. It supports up to 8 GB of LPDDR4, USB 3.0, Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and HDMI, and targets multimedia, navigation, SBCs, and smart cameras. A board with this chip was shown playing the original Super Mario.
MCST's Elbrus-based PCs were also on display, though the report gave few details. Tom's Hardware speculates the machines likely used the Elbrus-16S, a 16-core 16 nm chip with up to 2 GHz clocks and eight DDR4-3200 channels, or the Elbrus-2S3 aimed at mini-PCs and laptops. Because the exact models were not identified, those remain educated guesses rather than confirmed specs.