Tramplin Electronics, a Russia-based microelectronics company, has announced that it has obtained what it claims to be the first samples of its Irtysh processors based on the LoongArch instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by Loongson, a Chinese CPU developer, reports Tramplin.Media. The processor features 16 or 32 cores, and their specifications and packaging match Loongson's LS3C6000 CPUs, so we most likely are looking at re-badged products from the Chinese company.

Tramplin Electronics claims that it has obtained its 16-core Irtysh C616 and 32-core Irtysh C632 processors for sovereign data centers and HPC applications. Notably, Russian firms cannot rely on industry-standard x86 CPUs from AMD and Intel because they are sanctioned by the US and cannot be legally obtained from nearby countries. You can see the Russian chips in the flesh by expanding the tweet below.

The company's product catalogue also includes the 64-core Irtysh C664. The CPUs are based on the LA664 microarchitecture that features a 6-way out-of-order execution and simultaneous multi-threading (SMT) technology, as well as support 128-bit vector processing extension instructions (LSX) and 256-bit advanced vector processing extension instructions (LASX) for the new CPUs. Loongson and its Russian ally Tramplin claim that LA664-based CPUs are competitive against AMD's Zen 3 and Intel's Ice Lake-based offerings.

Among the advantages of the Irtysh processors, Vasily Vorobushkov, director of development at Tramplin Electronics, cited a proprietary boot environment, high energy efficiency, stable production, and uninterrupted supply. Development is said to be handled by the company's own team of engineers and designers, along with partner companies that build complete hardware-software solutions. The company is also said to operate its own design center focused on developing domestic IP blocks and maintains a broad ecosystem, though Vorobushkov did not elaborate on which blocks and elements of the ecosystem have been developed by Tramplin so far.

The specifications of Tramplin's 16-core Irtysh C616 (2.20 GHz, 32MB L3, quad-channel DDR4-3200 memory, 844.8 GFLOPS, 100W – 120W TDP) and 32-core Irtysh C632 processors (2.10 GHz, 64MB L3, octa-channel DDR4-3200 memory, 1612.8 GFLOPS, 180W – 200W TDP) are identical to those of Loongson's 16-core LS3C6000/S and 32-core LS3C6000/D CPUs down to a single number, which isn't something that happens usually unless we are dealing with the very same silicon.

Indeed, Tramplin Electronics was first registered on April 4, 2025, so the company is less than a year old. It is impossible to develop a processor from scratch (even based on a known/licensed ISA), find a production partner, build its physical design, tape it out, and get samples in this short of a time frame. In fact, a year is barely enough to bring up a new CPU based on an existing platform (this may easily take a couple of years for a company of AMD's or Intel's size), not to mention developing one from scratch. That said, even though the processors were made in the third week of 2026, it looks like these are regular Loongson LS3C6000 CPUs that carry Cyrillic inscriptions.

Now that Russia-based entities cannot legally obtain high-performance CPUs from companies like AMD or Intel, the only way for the country to retain access to more or less contemporary processors is to buy them illegally in nearby countries, or get Chinese processors from the People's Republic. Apparently, we are dealing with the second option here, albeit with an attempt to disguise Chinese processors as those developed in Russia. Interestingly, the source of the river Irtysh — after which the CPUs are named — is in China.

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Anton Shilov is a contributing writer at Tom’s Hardware. Over the past couple of decades, he has covered everything from CPUs and GPUs to supercomputers and from modern process technologies and latest fab tools to high-tech industry trends.