Despite sanctions and embargoes, Russia continues to buy American semiconductor devices, FPGAs (programmable logic integrated circuits) for the military industry AMD and Intel through third countries and intermediary firms.
According to the publication, FPGAs, which are used in military technologies, continue to enter Russia despite the sanctions thanks to the transactions of Russian buyers with a number of intermediary firms. In turn, manufacturing companies do not carry out thorough control over the purchase and resale of their products.
For example, in the navigation system of the Kh-101 missile, which Russia launched in July at the “Okhmatdit” children's hospital; in Kyiv, Xilinx (manufacturer AMD) integrated circuits were used. Similar, but more advanced microcircuits are also in the “Lancet” UAV. Xilinx microcircuits, as well as Altera (manufacturer Intel) are used in the navigation of “Iskanders”. and “Calibers”.
According to journalists, FPGAs are used not only in missiles and drones. Similar microcircuits are often used in radar technology, primarily military. This is indicated by data on purchases of Xilinx microcircuits by Russian enterprises and design bureaus, data on patents and applications for inventions that can be found in the Rospatent database, and vacancies for FPGA programmers that host Russian defense and space enterprises. The Xilinx and Altera brands are most often mentioned in them. Xilinx chips are also found in radio signal measurement equipment and in the Angara space launch vehicles.
In addition, Xilinx FPGAs are used in hardware complexes for encryption and protection of information “Continent” and “Sable”, which are manufactured by the Russian company “Safety Code”. Currently, she is working on new software and hardware complexes that are used, for example, in Internet filtering technologies.
State procurement data confirm the supply of components to Russian military and industrial enterprises. In particular, as indicated in the article, the sanctions did not prevent the Ural Optical-Mechanical Plant, which supplies products to the Russian army, from purchasing and using Xilinx microcircuits.
Boards of the American manufacturer worth tens of thousands of dollars were also purchased by the Orion STC, which produces hardware and software for the FSB. Also, after the introduction of restrictions, high-performance microcircuits were supplied to the Central Design Bureau of Automation, which produces navigation systems for Russian military missiles.
Nowadays in Russia it is freely offered to buy Xilinx FPGAs through sites similar in design and content. Buyers are “lured” headlines like “Official distributor of Xilinx in Russia” or “Wholesale supplies of scarce electronic components from the USA”.
The sanctioned Russian company T-Component SP, is posting “special offers” for the supply of Xilinx FPGAs.
While the company “Aidy Solutions” supplies Russia with significant volumes of top Xilinx FPGAs (including those already built into boards). It is known that in 2023, it delivered HTG-840 VIRTEX ULTRASCALE debugging boards to the Russian Federation via Uzbekistan, which contain the XCVU19P-1FSVB3824E FPGA, which is worth more than $80 thousand.