Mikron Group

Not to be confused with the American semiconductor and electronics manufacturer, Micron Technology.

Not to be confused with The Swiss manufacturing Mikron Group. Mikron is a trademark of Mikron Holding AG, Biel (Switzerland). www.mikron.com.

Mikron Group (Russian: Группа Микрон), headed by JSC Mikron (Russian: АО "Микрон"), is the leading developer, manufacturer and exporter of microelectronics in Russia and the CIS. Its main manufacturing facilities are located in Zelenograd, Russia. Other production facilities of the group are located in St.Petersburg and Voronezh. Part of the Element conglomerate.

Mikron Group

Company type	Joint-stock company
Founded	1964
Headquarters	Zelenograd , Russia
Products	Microelectronics
Revenue	6,686,000,000 Russian ruble (2017)
Net income	−1,624,000,000 Russian ruble (2017)
Number of employees	ca. 1500
Parent	Element Group
Website	www.tour.mikron.ru

History

The plant was launched under the auspices of NIIME (Scientific and research institute of molecular electronics) in Zelenograd, in the outskirts of Moscow, in a Soviet attempt to keep up with the rapidly developing Western microelectronics. By 1966 it delivered around 100'000 units per year falling short of the rising demand from the military, scientific and civil customers.

By 1970 the plant, now having its own brand name Mikron, was radically expanded and separated from NIISE, to deliver over 3.5 million units a year. Being involved in Soviet space program the plant and NIISE as its R&D division enjoyed virtually unlimited financing keeping Soviets fairly on par with the West. Among notable early products of Mikron are transistors and chips for spacecraft reaching the Moon, Venus and Mars, and also for the first Elbrus-series supercomputers.

During 1980-ties with the rising domestic economic problems and US embargo on hi-tech exports, Soviet chip-making industry mostly reverse-engineered, adapted and reproduced successful foreign designs, e.g. Mikron and NIIME were awarded for the development of ES EVM computer system, based on IBM/360 series. However, with the international markets opened in 1990, Mikron managed to get a contract from Samsung to supply chips for wrist watches and calculators.

The company collaborated with STMicroelectronics to establish a 180 nm process in 2007, with plans to begin mass production the next year.

In 2010, Mikron obtained a license for a 90 nm process, with production starting around 2012–2013. The 90 nm production facilities and the design center were co-financed almost up to 50% by Rusnano, with a total cost of 16,57 billion Russian rubles.

In 2013 Mikron produced first native pre-commercial 65 nm working chips, that, however did not go for mass production by 2014 as initially planned.

In 2014, due to the suspension of activities between Visa, MasterCard and certain Russian banks, Mikron hoped to receive orders related to the creation of the Russian national card payment system to be launched in 2015.

In late 2014 it was announced that Mikron had started pilot production of a domestic microprocessor called Elbrus-2SM using a 90 nm process under the import substitution program in Russia. Domestic production of the Elbrus-2SM microprocessor was selected by the readers of the technical magazine CNews as the most significant event of 2014, while the creation of a national card payment system ranked at number 3 on the list. However, due to unstable quality issues that the plant had faced, the mass production of these processors was contracted from TSMC.

In May 2022, MCST started talks with Mikron to move production of the Elbrus processors to Mikron's facilities, after Taiwan's TSMC cut off its ties with the Russian company due to US sanctions. The transfer of production would require MCST to switch back to a 90 nm process, as Mikron does not yet provide production using 28 nm technology.

By early 2023 the total output of Mikron reached over 4 billion chips of 100 different kinds that include chips for biometric passports, smart cards, RFID tags. Its production line delivers chips based on 250 nm - 65 nm processes arranged in 6-8 layers. According to Forbes, a new plant is under construction in Zelenograd to further expand semiconductor and chip making capacities of the parent Element Group.

US Sanctions

During 1990-ties the Cold War era COCOM embargo was eased and in 2000-ties Russian chip manufacturing plants cooperated with US companies such as AMD in effort to obtain decommissioned past generation equipment needed to shorten the technological gap. In effort to curb these attempts, in 2012-2016 US government introduced sanctions against major Russian chip makers, Mikron included. Export of the US chip making equipment to Mikron became only available if duly licensed by the BIS. In April 2022, the US Treasury Department imposed blocking sanctions on 21 entities and 13 people, including Mikron, for their ties to Russia following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

MIK32 'Amur'

In February 2024 Mikron launched open market sales of a new fully domestically developed and manufactured microcontroller MIK32 Amur (a.k.a. К1948ВК018). This 180 nm process device is based on 32 bit RISC-V (RV32IMC) core, analogous to STM32L0 from STMicroelectronics, but with enhanced security features. With this microcontroller Mikron _targets various market niches left behind by the withdrawing foreign suppliers, such as Smart Home and Internet of Things appliances. According to Vedomosti, actual demand far exceeded the capabilities of packaging available at Mikron, so the manufacturer engaged Kaliningrad-based GS Group plant as subcontractor for that job. However, with its own new line of packaging that is able to produce up to 18 Mio units per year and is being tested now (May 2024) Mikron abandons outsourcing of packaging.

Other products

• 589 series bit-slice processor (equivalent to Intel 3000)
• 1891 series CPU (Elbrus 2000 instruction set; designed by MCST)
  • Elbrus-8SV(CPU CHIP PRODUCTION NUMBER：1891VM12Ya) CPU (Elbrus-8S reverse engineering set; copied by MCST).
• 1892 series CPUs (MIPS32 instruction set; designed by ELVEES Multicore)
• 1907 series CPUs (MIPS32 instruction set, designed by the Scientific Research Institute of System Development)
  • K5500VK018 CPUs (MIPS IV instruction set, designed by the Scientific Research Institute of System Development).

Gallery

• 
  Main office
• 
  One of the engineering buildings
• 
  Bit-slice processor K589IK02, manufactured 1989
• 
  16Mbit SRAM 1663RU1, manufactured 2014

Shareholders

As of April 2016, the largest shareholders of JSC NIIME and Micron are:

• JSC RTI (directly and through subsidiaries) — 70,189%;
• JSC Rusnano — 20.42%;
• Federal Agency for State Property Management — 6.549%.

The remaining shares are distributed among minority shareholders.

In February 201, JSC RTI-Microelectronics (100% daughter of JSC RTI) JSC Rusnano has transferred a part of the shares of JSC NIIME and Micron to trust management, as a result of which Rusnano can dispose of a package of 27,238%.

Subsidiaries

• Sitronics Microdesign LLC
• Sitronics Smart Technologies LLC

See also

• Soviet integrated circuit designation

External links

• 55th anniversary of the Mikron plant Official website in Russian
• Excursions to the Mikron plant Official website in Russian - Micron provides contract manufacturing services according to technological

standards from 90 nm to 65 nm with a focus on the following technologies．

• Media related to Mikron Group at Wikimedia Commons