Call to ditch Russian-made CPUs

OpenBLAS is considering dropping support for Russian processors because of the war in Ukraine.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has seen global condemnation. Many tech companies are pulling their products from Russia in protest, while others have stopped using Russian-made components.

OpenBLAS, an open-source implementation of the BLAS and LAPACK APIs, only recently added support for the Russian-made Elbrus E2000 processors, but now the team is considering revoking that support in light of Russia’s actions. The fact that OpenBLAS could be used for military functions is an added ethical conundrum for the team. As RFC (Request for Comments) on the product’s GitHub (https://bit. ly/lxf288openblas) explains, “The Elbrus processor is a so-called homegrown processor, with the primary use case of circumventing sanctions,” and is almost certainly used in Russian military equipment. While the RFC uses very emotive language, claiming that “continued support for the Elbrus processor within OpenBLAS is tantamount to supporting the Putin regime and its military aggression,” there’s a point to be made about removing support, especially because Elbrus CPUs will likely be used more often now that both Intel and AMD have suspended processor sales to Russia.

The RFC has received a mixed response. While a lot of comments are broadly supportive, there have been some people who have questioned how much impact a move like this would have, with some calling it an ‘empty gesture’. Others, meanwhile, point out that while dropping support for Elbrus E2000 may not make a huge difference, it’s nevertheless an important show of support to the Ukrainian people.