Soviet production of electronic components

[raptor1956]

Mush of the developments that pushed electronics forward were the product of work at places like Siemens and the British Radar work and then the integrated circuit as we now know it at TI and Fairchild to name a few.  That is, much of this work was done in the west.  As IC's evolved into micro processors and RAM the capabilities expanded exponentially -- but again, much of this work was done in the west at places like Intel and Motorola.  So, over this time there was very little known about what was going on in the former Soviet Union on a lot of things but here I'm concerned about how they went about producing or acquiring electronic components.  As someone that's been in the semiconductor industry since the early 80's and has seen the evolution and revolution from within and also aware of the incredible cost to build a FAB and produce the tooling needed I even more puzzled by the black hole that was the Soviet Union's electronic industry.  Please, I'm not interested in starting a flame war and I no desire to ridicule what they did so I would hope anyone wishing to comment would keep that in mind and offer any insights you may have in a factual way.

In it's current form the semiconductor industry, at the 10nm scale, is insanely expensive as the core tool needed to do this, lithography, is now at the $80M USD per machine price level and there are very few players in the litho business with the skills needed being very cutting edge.  And, decades ago, even though the demands for litho were no where near what they are today there was still the problem that only a handful of companies in the west were producing the processing tools so either the Soviets were able to construct there own industry with the own processing equipment or they had to get there hands on tooling from the west. 

Part of my problem, I suspect, is that my knowledge of what the Soviets did is limited by the fact that they were pretty closed mouthed and we in the west largely went on viewing things from out perspective.  It seem likely that the Soviets must have done some pioneering work but we in the west knew little about it.

So, beginning at the component level of transistor and IC production then moving up from there to PCB's of various function, how did the Soviets stay relevant with the west.  Soviet missile technology has been on par with the west since the 50's and by some measures are and were at least equal and perhaps ahead of the west.  Making such things work requires real competence with electronics and more to the point, the ability to produce them.  In the last few decades the microprocessor has revolutionized everything and perhaps no where more than military hardware such as fighter planes.  The narrative we have in the west is the it was Intel that, with the 4004, ushered in the microprocessor but, once again, the story of the Soviet developments in this field are once again unknown to me.

Hopefully some of our Eastern European members can fill in the blanks here and of all the former Soviet republics perhaps our Czech, Hungarian, Ukrainian and Polish members can address this.

Again, I want to be clear that my interest here is an honest one and I do not want this to devolve into an East versus West debate.  Yes, espionage will have played a roll, it always does, but there were and are many brilliant people that few of us in the west ever heard of.


Brian

[ataradov]

Cost is no problem when you run the whole country as one big company.

The question is too generic. Up to the 80s Soviet Union was on par with the world. It was lagging a bit, because a lot of new development was "inspired" by what was happening in the west. But ability to throw a lot of money at the problem ensured fast catching up to any new developments.

Soviet Union had its own machines (including stuff made in GDR), but IC designs were borrowed in a lot of cases. In some cases they were just mask copies, in others just functional analogs redesigned from scratch. A good representation of a complex IC available at the peak - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KR580VM80A . After that the development of own technology essentially stopped.

[janoc]

Well, I am hardly an expert but the Eastern bloc was quite successful at both cloning and developing a lot of semiconductors. I don't know many Soviet parts but e.g. the Czechoslovak TESLA was producing the 7400 logic series (MH74xx/54xx/84xx), the 4000 CMOS series, lots of analog ICs too - e.g. uA741 was produced as MAA741, LM723 as MAA723, etc. I still have quite a few of these in my junk bin.

E.g. Intel 8080 was produced as MHB8080 by TESLA, I believe they were producing also an 8088 or 8086 clone. East Germans were making Z80 clone U880 which has found its way into many home computers.

You can have a look at what ICs TESLA was producing e.g. here (under Catalogue):
http://www.tesla-ic.com/

The same for vacuum tubes, transistors, diodes, etc. Soviets were manufacturing these things on a pretty large scale too. There are plenty of websites showing these things, e.g.:
http://www.cpushack.com/soviet-cpus.html


Then there was a pretty large scale computer industry - both clones (e.g. the IBM's System 360 and DEC's PDP series) but also completely own designs. The same for test instruments, radio gear, etc.

Pretty much most of the electronic industry production was going either into military applications or further industrial deployment. Consumer electronics was pretty much the last to get any of this - e.g. it was common to have a black & white vacuum tube TV until the mid-late 80's where I lived. Solid state and color TVs were rare, expensive and mostly crap.

There has been also quite a bit of own R&D done because importing Western components was either very difficult (limited hard currency reserves) or straight impossible (embargoes). Espionage certainly played a role but probably smaller than you think - the Eastern bloc did lack modern resources compared to the Western counterparts at the time  but certainly didn't lack first class engineers and scientists.

And to fly an ICBM on target you don't need a supercomputer - especially if the thing carries a nuke that will flatten a city of several millions of people. Then you really don't really care if it has an "accuracy" of several kilometers ...

Also both as a consequence of this lack of resources and access to the modern components the designs were quite a bit different - more primitive and crude, with engineering ingenuity having to make up for the lack of resources. However, the gear was often built to withstand much worse handling and conditions than Western gear ever could. Just compare e.g. the Vostok or Soyuz space capsules with Apollo - much much simpler and primitive but thanks to that there was much less that could break and cause problems (not in the least due to the infamously sloppy workmanship).

[Cerebus]

And to fly an ICBM on target you don't need a supercomputer - especially if the thing carries a nuke that will flatten a city of several millions of people. Then you really don't really care if it has an "accuracy" of several kilometers ...

Indeed early (1960s vintage) Soviet ICBMs had CEPs (Circular Error Probability) in the 1.5-6km range. By 1974 the SS-9 had a CEP of 200-700m (for a 18-26 MTon payload).

[raptor1956]

And to fly an ICBM on target you don't need a supercomputer - especially if the thing carries a nuke that will flatten a city of several millions of people. Then you really don't really care if it has an "accuracy" of several kilometers ...

Indeed early (1960s vintage) Soviet ICBMs had CEPs (Circular Error Probability) in the 1.5-6km range. By 1974 the SS-9 had a CEP of 200-700m (for a 18-26 MTon payload).

When I mentioned Russian missiles I wasn't so much talking about nukes as SAM's and air-to-air missiles -- these don't work very well if you can only expect to get within a km or so.  The advances in Russian SAM's were game changers for the U2 missions and some say it even made the XB-70 irrelevant as well.  So, even back in the 50's the Russians were making some pretty good missiles -- some of which are still in service and lethal.

I suspected some of the IC's and components were thanks to espionage but it's also the case that Russia had and still has lots of brilliant people -- we just don't get to hear much about them in the west.  If what ataradov says about the development work ending in the 80's is true, and I find it hard to imagine that Russia would have ended all development and production work on components that were critical to there weapons programs, it would suggest that with the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians have had more-or-less unfettered access to western IC's and components and that more recent systems would then be based on western IC's and components -- again, that seems a bit suspect given the strategic aspects of there weapons programs.

And thanks to janoc for his feedback on the work done in the Czech Republic during the Soviet era -- outside of Russia itself the Czech Republic and the GDR would seem to have been the other centers for Soviet technology.

The 1980's were a milestone period not only for the demise of the Soviet Union but also the move to VSLI and the need for much tighter cleanliness requirements as feature sizes reached below a micron.  In the early 80's, when I worked at IBM East Fishkill, we were transitioning our thermal production tools to cantilever system to eliminate the quartz-to-quartz scrapping that was the norm up till then.  As you can imagine, pushing a quartz boat/sled into the quartz tube of a furnace was very dirty and up to the early 80's, because feature sizes were between 1um and 10um, the contamination was livable, but when feature sizes got smaller that no longer was acceptable.  So, I can see that copying or catching up was more feasible up to the early 80's and less feasible after that point.

Thanks also to blueskull for his comments vis a vis China -- though not strictly what I was asking about the needs and methods would appear to have been similar.  One thing I'd argue with is his comment about western education systems focusing on "useless" things like creativity and freedom -- our universities are filled with Chinese students so one would think they see some value in the approach.  You can copy if you are good at engineering, but to innovate requires something more and in this area the west still leads the world -- though the lead is shrinking...


Brian

[ataradov]

If what ataradov says about the development work ending in the 80's is true, and I find it hard to imagine that Russia would have ended all development and production work on components that were critical to there weapons programs,

It did not end abruptly, it just slowed down to the point of near death. There are still factories from that time that still make ICs (they have switched to modern equipment, of course), so the industry did not die entirely, it just really stopped developing, new equipment stopped being produced, all the associated research institutes shrunk in size.

While military is a big part of demand, consumer electronics contributed a lot as well. And consumers started switching to imported ICs, since they were easier to get, there were no supply shortages.

it would suggest that with the fall of the Soviet Union the Russians have had more-or-less unfettered access to western IC's and components and that more recent systems would then be based on western IC's and components -- again, that seems a bit suspect given the strategic aspects of there weapons programs.

Military people did not really adopt digital ICs as much, a lot of those ICBMs are still analog. Digital ICs were mostly used in non-critical ground equipment, like computers for R&D and stuff like that.

And it still happens to this day. If as a developer you want to use an imported component (if there is no equivalent Russian), you just write a note-type document (1 page) with clarifications of your requirements. If it gets approved (in many cases it does), supply people will buy some stock for maintenance, and you are free to use that component. And then as a result, in theory an R&D (called OKR in Russia) projects starts, and some of them even end up with a replacement component.

This rule is easier to apply to high-end stuff. Russia goes not make really big FPGAs, and some equipment is impossible or impractical to design without them.

Again, typically stuff that actually goes into actual rocket is all done with Russian components and components from Belarus, since it had huge concentration of manufacturing in Soviet Union, and Russia has good relationship with them.

But bear in mind, Russia considers ICs designed in Russia, but built by TSMC to be Russian for the purpose of this discussion.

[Someone]

When I mentioned Russian missiles I wasn't so much talking about nukes as SAM's and air-to-air missiles -- these don't work very well if you can only expect to get within a km or so.  The advances in Russian SAM's were game changers for the U2 missions and some say it even made the XB-70 irrelevant as well.  So, even back in the 50's the Russians were making some pretty good missiles -- some of which are still in service and lethal.

I suspected some of the IC's and components were thanks to espionage but it's also the case that Russia had and still has lots of brilliant people -- we just don't get to hear much about them in the west.

The electronics for such systems can be deceptively simple. The only controlled technology needed beyond the rocket/propellant and explosives are the fast IR detectors such as HgCdTe or PbSe which can be made in low volumes without the vast complexity of a semiconductor lithographic process.

Back on more generic semiconductor technology if you rely on wikipedia you get a very US centric view of the world, but you can find a little on the periphery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrem_(company)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikron_Group
And thats before you delve into all the allied countries during the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

[MasterT]

 I remember my first job at the CMOS factory, in Far East of Russia in 1992 as a quality engineer. We made some IC for military - K765 series, along with common "citizens" series K561 & K176.  Know that 765 was for some anti-missiles, alike "Patriots". 
 I wander, that discussions  doesn't include Japanese electronics, myself and all my friends dream about Japanese consumer electronics at that time, not american.   
 Regarding miniaturization, nano-technology - nm processes, it's not for battle field, nm and radiation/EMI resistivity is in inverse proportion. Can't see how the dumb size reduction may lead the technology. Rather the way to colonize the world. 

[VK3DRB]

Not having the brains to be innovative, Russian scum copied most IC's that US companies invented - even Intel ICs. Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience. The USA should always be honoured for its great technological leadership in electronics. No-one can deny America's contribution to electronics and technological innovation - past, present and future.

[radar_macgyver]

An acquaintance who grew up in Russia told me that in the late 70s various research labs there had produced competent CPUs that had good performance. However, the government instead decided to fund the cloning of chips used in the DEC VAX series, because those were the computers that ran the CAD programs used to design aircraft and missiles. Industrial espionage took care of getting the CAD files into Russia, where they could be studied and improved upon. Of course, this is probably third-hand information since I have no reason to believe this guy would have worked on this stuff himself.

[ataradov]

There were clones and entirely new CPUs developed and produced at the same time. I have never heard of stealing the software though. All CAD-like software I've seen was developed in the Soviet Union. Or at least it was masqueraded well enough - all translated into Russian, using metric system, and adhering to GOST standards.

The software was pretty primitive, so I don't know how much of it was actually used for designs.

The mathematical software was pretty advanced, but that was just command line stuff written in Fortran.

[daqq]

And thanks to janoc for his feedback on the work done in the Czech Republic during the Soviet era -- outside of Russia itself the Czech Republic and the GDR would seem to have been the other centers for Soviet technology.

It should be noted that during the soviet era it was actually Czechoslovakia. Slovakia also had some semiconductor production.

Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience.

Erm, check again. While there's a lot of copying going on for sure, China is VERY creative these days.



Here's a nice article:
https://hackaday.com/2014/12/15/home-computers-behind-the-iron-curtain/

If you want some pics of these alien (for you) constructs, see:
http://kxk.ru/dustyattic/v20_647735_1.php

Misc:
http://englishrussia.com/2010/09/29/a-visit-to-the-micron-factory/
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-elbrus-2-a-soviet-era-high-performance-computer/

[BravoV]

Not having the brains to be innovative, Russian scum copied most IC's that US companies invented - even Intel ICs. Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience. The USA should always be honoured for its great technological leadership in electronics. No-one can deny America's contribution to electronics and technological innovation - past, present and future.

Have you ever read the history about few simple stuffs such as compass, fireworks ?  Guess not eeh ...

[Bud]

Give the guy some slack, he's been sick. And as can be seen in this thread, it is hopeless.

I've been mad for fucking years, absolutely years... I've always been mad, I know I've been mad, like the most of us are. It's very hard to explain why you're mad, even if you're not mad.

[raptor1956]

And thanks to janoc for his feedback on the work done in the Czech Republic during the Soviet era -- outside of Russia itself the Czech Republic and the GDR would seem to have been the other centers for Soviet technology.

It should be noted that during the soviet era it was actually Czechoslovakia. Slovakia also had some semiconductor production.

Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience.

Erm, check again. While there's a lot of copying going on for sure, China is VERY creative these days.



Here's a nice article:
https://hackaday.com/2014/12/15/home-computers-behind-the-iron-curtain/

If you want some pics of these alien (for you) constructs, see:
http://kxk.ru/dustyattic/v20_647735_1.php

Misc:
http://englishrussia.com/2010/09/29/a-visit-to-the-micron-factory/
http://www.computerhistory.org/atchm/the-elbrus-2-a-soviet-era-high-performance-computer/

Thanks for pointing out that before the fall the Czech Republic was part of a larger client state including what is now known as Slovakia -- I should have been clearer there...

I also appreciate the come back on China -- they may have in the past and still to this day engaged in reverse engineering and outright IP theft, but they have lots of brilliant engineers and scientists and before long they will combine there new found wealth with that talent and challenge the world with there new ideas.  In at least one area they are clearly the world leader -- consumer drones, no one is even close to them as GoPro discovered.  When you have millions of talented engineers performing tasks like building production facilities for Apple etc, sooner or later some of those engineers will strike out on there own in much the same way engineers in Silicon Valley have done for decades.

Please, although we've had one person go off on a thinly veiled racist rant I'd hope that we can stay on point here and avoid such nonsense.  As someone that's been in the industry a long time I'm interested to know about what went on on the other side.


Brian

[raptor1956]

Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience.

Read this, white pig*.

https://iq-research.info/en/page/average-iq-by-country

Macau is too small to acquire useful statistics and North Korea keeps to itself too much, otherwise greater China and Japan and greater Korea will take top 6 of the list.

*: to the particular individual. I don't have a beef to the general white population.

Sorry you had to see that...


Brian

[raptor1956]

When I mentioned Russian missiles I wasn't so much talking about nukes as SAM's and air-to-air missiles -- these don't work very well if you can only expect to get within a km or so.  The advances in Russian SAM's were game changers for the U2 missions and some say it even made the XB-70 irrelevant as well.  So, even back in the 50's the Russians were making some pretty good missiles -- some of which are still in service and lethal.

I suspected some of the IC's and components were thanks to espionage but it's also the case that Russia had and still has lots of brilliant people -- we just don't get to hear much about them in the west.

The electronics for such systems can be deceptively simple. The only controlled technology needed beyond the rocket/propellant and explosives are the fast IR detectors such as HgCdTe or PbSe which can be made in low volumes without the vast complexity of a semiconductor lithographic process.

Back on more generic semiconductor technology if you rely on wikipedia you get a very US centric view of the world, but you can find a little on the periphery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrem_(company)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikron_Group
And thats before you delve into all the allied countries during the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The missile system that took down the high flying U2 flown by Francis Gary Powers in 1960 was not an IR missile but instead was radar guided with ground based command.  In addition, anything traveling at Mach3 had better have pretty fast responding controls or it will miss the target by, well, miles.  If it were so trivial why have so few nations, with large budgets at there disposal, been able to cob together something comparable 60 years later?  Even advanced missiles from places like the USA are not 100% effective against fast high flying targets -- IE the Patriot Missile.  Additionally, during the 60's and the Viet Nam war the principle longer range air-to-air missile in the US arsenal, the Sparrow, was pretty damn useless in spite of the advanced electronics we had.  Intercepting and destroying a fast moving target at high altitude is non-trivial!


Brian

[ataradov]

The missile system that took down the high flying U2 flown by Francis Gary Powers in 1960

Slight OT here. There are transcripts of his interviews by the CIA after the exchange, and now they are publicly available thanks to FOIA here https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/home (search for "Gary Powers Tape").

Fascinating reading and amazing coincidence. The fact that rocket hit is a miracle, it was at its absolute limits, and he happened to fly right over the launch site. And the reason he had to fly over that place is to take picture of some unusual activity, which actually was testing of those new rockets for S-75 launcher.

[Someone]

When I mentioned Russian missiles I wasn't so much talking about nukes as SAM's and air-to-air missiles -- these don't work very well if you can only expect to get within a km or so.  The advances in Russian SAM's were game changers for the U2 missions and some say it even made the XB-70 irrelevant as well.  So, even back in the 50's the Russians were making some pretty good missiles -- some of which are still in service and lethal.

I suspected some of the IC's and components were thanks to espionage but it's also the case that Russia had and still has lots of brilliant people -- we just don't get to hear much about them in the west.

The electronics for such systems can be deceptively simple. The only controlled technology needed beyond the rocket/propellant and explosives are the fast IR detectors such as HgCdTe or PbSe which can be made in low volumes without the vast complexity of a semiconductor lithographic process.

Back on more generic semiconductor technology if you rely on wikipedia you get a very US centric view of the world, but you can find a little on the periphery:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angstrem_(company)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mikron_Group
And thats before you delve into all the allied countries during the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The missile system that took down the high flying U2 flown by Francis Gary Powers in 1960 was not an IR missile but instead was radar guided with ground based command.  In addition, anything traveling at Mach3 had better have pretty fast responding controls or it will miss the target by, well, miles.  If it were so trivial why have so few nations, with large budgets at there disposal, been able to cob together something comparable 60 years later?  Even advanced missiles from places like the USA are not 100% effective against fast high flying targets -- IE the Patriot Missile.  Additionally, during the 60's and the Viet Nam war the principle longer range air-to-air missile in the US arsenal, the Sparrow, was pretty damn useless in spite of the advanced electronics we had.  Intercepting and destroying a fast moving target at high altitude is non-trivial!

Semi-Active and passive radar techniques were already in general use during the second world war, so they weren't hard to access for the USSR and not challenging to produce. But the usual game of cat and mouse continued on as counter measures and then counter counter measures were deployed for radar based systems and IR navigation. The point was that missiles didn't need advanced electronics to do their amazing tricks, just a lot of money spent developing and testing them which both sides seemed to have available.

[dgtl]

I've heard a lot of stories from my older colleagues as I'm too young myself to have been working in soviet times.
As there was shortage of pretty much everything and the military was priority, the best stuff was allocated for military use only. For example, transistors with KT prefix were commercial-use and 2T were military-only. The military-purposed ones were better (tighter tolerances), but they were not allowed to be used in commercial applications. Hobbyists were able to get some unofficially sometimes, but they definitely could not be used in manufacturing.
For commercial stuff (ie radios), the components were split in 3 categories: things you could use, things you had to get special permission to use (incl paperwork showing why any substitution is not possible) and the stuff you could never use. It was not building down to a price point like now - you were not allowed to use these components at all. The allowed components had very large tolerances, so the schematics had to be engineered to cope with both extremes. For example, the probably most common transistor, KT315/KT361, had h21e of 20-90 or 50-350 depending on variant. And taking apart whatever device manufactured after 1980-ish, there are very probably some KT315/KT361 inside. Your schematic solution had to handle the variance, whatever was thrown in ther during the manufacturing.
All of the companies were state-owned and governed during the soviet times (with some small exeptions at the very end). Some engineers, who worked in large and important engineering bureaus at the second half of eighties, told that these larger and most important bureaus were actually using western gear - tek, rohde etc, because these were much better. These were smuggled into the country, probably at the goverment level. Officially, this gear did not exist. Even if development was done on these, the type qualification and all official testing had to be done with soviet equivelents. Engineers of that times have told me, that they were going mad with passing the testing - the better western gear told that everything was passing, but the official tests with soviet gear failed... And they had to tweak the products to get the required results.
Copying western stuff was not only ok, but required. Old engineers have talked how some officials smuggled some western audio gear into the country and then brought to the engineering bureaus to reproduce. The only issue was that the western component base was so much better that they had to design the internals ground-up. Of course these clones were much lower spec, but still looked quite similar. For example, there are tales that the gov officials in moscow had smuggled some Sharp Optonica audio gear to moscow. The management of RET engineering bureau (Tallinn, Estonia) were called in to Moscow and asked why they do not make stuff like that. They were given orders to reproduce the gear. The gear sold as "Estonia 010" series were visually and functionally clones of Sharp Optonica SM5100, RP7100 etc. The Sharp amplifier used ic output stage, it had preamp and power amp in one box. Soviet engineers did not have ic amplifiers, they redesigned the device with discrete components. Their version was much larger in 2 separate boxes (separate preamp and power amp), both of the boxes were 5cm wider. But the overall design and functionality was quite well copied. The record player was unique because it had automatic track searching etc. The sound quality was quite good considering soviet stuff, but the reliability was just horrible. Designing that large functionality with high count of unreliable discrete components meant that the failure rate was very high - i've seen probably more dead Estonia 010 amps than working ones.
Digital and microprocessor design was also very different. Most of the 74 series etc had soviet equivalants (K155, K561 series etc). The microprocessors were either mask copies of western stuff or functionally equal redesigns. Some older colleagues tell that when microprocessors became available outside of military market, the first years they were only able to get their hands on broken ones - the boxes of processor trays came with errata sheets, that listed which instructions worked on that batch. You had to program the code on that batch of controllers  with those instructions only. A year later, these sheets changed to listing the instructions that did not work.

[coppice]

Not having the brains to be innovative, Russian scum copied most IC's that US companies invented - even Intel ICs. Now its China who demonstrates it does not have the IQ to create anything much, just copy and steal, without a conscience. The USA should always be honoured for its great technological leadership in electronics. No-one can deny America's contribution to electronics and technological innovation - past, present and future.

Even most Americans with a little knowledge of history will tell you America was a technologically somewhat backward country at the end of the second world war. The reason they did so well in that war was their size gave them enormous production capacity. They didn't do well through their technological edge. After the second world war the cold war made America open to importing talent from any place it could find it, and build a technological edge in as many fields as they could. This worked rather well. Walk through an engineering department in the US, and you'll find a lot of the smartest and most respected members of the team come from those countries you think lack talent.

Someone coming to the table late is going to be at a disadvantage, endlessly trying to catch up with those who arrived first. China knew that, and has done a lot to absorb technology and catch up over the last 40 years. Now many of its major technology companies are on par with western ones, they are increasingly funding original research. Expect to see interesting things from them in the coming decades.

[LaserSteve]

And whose Nixies and Neons won? Pretty clearly the USSR ones!
Russian Mil  RF tubes are damn amazing... Same for their thyratrons, plentiful, cheap, and very good at high energy.

I used to maintain some products made in Lithuania.. My gripe was that GOST series mil spec connectors were poorly toleranced crap and difficult to assemble  compared to Amp/Cannon...

One major difference. Soviet era high power equipment had tougher safety regs, you pop the lid and any large storage  caps are immediately discharged.

One thing USSR seemed to excel at, large SCRs and high power, high voltage, NPN  transistors.  The Lithuanian lasers I worked on had NPN inverter transistors for which there was no western equivalent.

The Rs and Cs used were quite nice, if a bit bulky. What is the deal with that weird shade of green paint used  for many discrete components and transformers? Was it for tropical conditions or something?

Steve

[Vtile]

They also did have different point of view in some research like the trinary computers etc.

At Riga, Latvia there were a huge radio factory - VEF, I suppose they also made own components.

[janoc]

One thing I'd argue with is his comment about western education systems focusing on "useless" things like creativity and freedom -- our universities are filled with Chinese students so one would think they see some value in the approach.  You can copy if you are good at engineering, but to innovate requires something more and in this area the west still leads the world -- though the lead is shrinking...

I went through US MS and PhD education, and I've done TA jobs training US students and know what's happening in US universities.

The creativity thing is great, but that's putting the students in a gamble. If one is not really that good at creating new things, then without solid engineering capability, how can him or her compete Chinese and Indian workers with solid engineering background? I've seen many successful US students with good creativity and engineering capability, but I've seen equally as many, if not more, students failing to understand the basic engineering ideas. In other words, without common engineering sense.

As for the freedom of thinking and religion part, the only thing I would like to say is when one challenges mother nature, he or she always fails.

Careful there. I was teaching at a fairly large Danish technical university and I had regularly Chinese students in class. They were excellent in things like doing crazy calculations from memory - one guy had it literally calculated faster than I could punch it into a calculator ... My Danish students were absolutely no contest for them in this, especially given that many didn't know how to work with fractions, negative numbers, etc. (not kidding!).

On the other hand, these Chinese students were almost always utterly lost unless told exactly what and how to do. When it came to actual problem solving where they had to think for themselves and actually decide on their own approach to it, they were hopeless and the Danes were running circles around them. It was a completely foreign concept to them - they were used to a system where teacher tells them exactly what to do and they do exactly that, not a step aside. In Denmark (and the rest of the Scandinavian countries) the kids are taught independent thinking and problem solving from a young age, constantly working on projects and similar. So this is second nature to them. The creativity part is a natural component of this, including studying subjects in humanities to give them wider cultural background.

It shows that different education styles produce different results. I am pretty sure the Danes would have learned the math better if they were pushed (sadly the trend has been to go exactly in the opposite direction - but that's another debate) and most of my Chinese students did actually figure out that independent thought and problem solving part after a while, especially because we were forcing them to work in mixed groups with the Danish students so they were learning from each other.

However, saying that the Chinese students have a "solid engineering background" is a bit of a stretch, IMO. I am sure they have excellent background in math, physics and similar things but that isn't everything. Engineering is first and foremost about problem solving abilities.

Now, just to be clear, I am not saying that the Western students are better or worse than the Chinese kids. They are different thanks to the different education systems they come from and each have their own pros and cons.

[coppice]

Careful there. I was teaching at a fairly large Danish technical university and I had regularly Chinese students in class. They were excellent in things like doing crazy calculations from memory - one guy had it literally calculated faster than I could punch it into a calculator ... My Danish students were absolutely no contest for them in this, especially given that many didn't know how to work with fractions, negative numbers, etc. (not kidding!).

On the other hand, these Chinese students were almost always utterly lost unless told exactly what and how to do. When it came to actual problem solving where they had to think for themselves and actually decide on their own approach to it, they were hopeless and the Danes were running circles around them. It was a completely foreign concept to them - they were used to a system where teacher tells them exactly what to do and they do exactly that, not a step aside. In Denmark (and the rest of the Scandinavian countries) the kids are taught independent thinking and problem solving from a young age, constantly working on projects and similar. So this is second nature to them. The creativity part is a natural component of this, including studying subjects in humanities to give them wider cultural background.

It shows that different education styles produce different results. I am pretty sure the Danes would have learned the math better if they were pushed (sadly the trend has been to go exactly in the opposite direction - but that's another debate) and most of my Chinese students did actually figure out that independent thought and problem solving part after a while, especially because we were forcing them to work in mixed groups with the Danish students so they were learning from each other.

However, saying that the Chinese students have a "solid engineering background" is a bit of a stretch, IMO. I am sure they have excellent background in math, physics and similar things but that isn't everything. Engineering is first and foremost about problem solving abilities.

Now, just to be clear, I am not saying that the Western students are better or worse than the Chinese kids. They are different thanks to the different education systems they come from and each have their own pros and cons.

Many people in East Asia are fully aware that a major weakness of their education systems is excessive spoon feeding. It really annoys a lot of people just how much they have been spoon fed, and poor prepared for real world problem solving. However, there are efforts to change this.

Its unfair to say that "these Chinese students were almost always utterly lost unless told exactly what and how to do". You can't hold the smartest ones back by not nurturing their problem solving skills. It comes naturally to them. The people let down by excessive spoon feeding are the middling students.