{"id":5664,"date":"2026-04-17T00:21:05","date_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5664"},"modified":"2026-04-17T00:21:05","modified_gmt":"2026-04-17T07:21:05","slug":"russian-baikal-cpus-are-losing-their-place-in-the-linux-kernel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/?p=5664","title":{"rendered":"Russian Baikal CPUs Are Losing Their Place in the Linux Kernel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Support for Russian Baikal CPUs is being pulled from the Linux kernel<\/a>. Work has begun in the Linux 7.1 cycle to remove driver code and device tree bindings for Baikal SoC <\/em>hardware, with more patches already lined up to follow.<\/p>\n

The first removal came with the ATA pull for Linux 7.1-rc1, merged by Linus Torvalds<\/a> on April 15. It dropped the Baikal bt1-ahci DT<\/em> binding and stripped Baikal-specific code from the ahci_dwc<\/code> driver, with the ATA maintainer, Niklas Cassel<\/a>, noting that upstreaming for the SoC “is not going to be finalized<\/em>.” <\/p>\n

\"this
You can browse the <\/em><\/i>LKML<\/em><\/i><\/a> for tracking Baikal’s removal.<\/em><\/i><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Furthermore, the code had been sitting unmaintained for some time now<\/strong>. Serge Semin<\/a>, who contributed the bulk of Baikal’s kernel support over the years, was among roughly a dozen Russian developers removed from the kernel MAINTAINERS<\/em> file in 2024<\/a>.<\/p>\n

With no one left to maintain it and the hardware itself rare even within Russia, there appears to be no rationale for keeping the code around.<\/p>\n

Some background info<\/h2>\n

The Baikal line of CPUs is the work of Baikal Electronics<\/a>, which was founded in January 2012 as a spinoff of T-Platforms<\/a>, a Russian supercomputer company.<\/p>\n

It started with a MIPS-based chip for embedded applications, then pivoted to ARM<\/a> for its later processors, all manufactured at TSMC<\/a>. The plan was to supply Russian state-owned enterprises with domestically produced CPUs as an alternative to Intel and AMD.<\/p>\n

But Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine ended that. Sanctions cut off TSMC access, 150,000 Baikal-M units already manufactured were seized in Taiwan, and ARM production licenses were lost. The company filed for bankruptcy in August 2023<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It did not stay down. By the end of 2024, Baikal had shipped a total of 85,000 processors since its founding<\/a> and began serial production of the Baikal-U1000, a RISC-V microcontroller, in September 2025<\/a> (in Russian<\/em>).<\/p>\n

The current lineup<\/a> consists of the Baikal-T (MIPS), Baikal-M and Baikal-S (ARM), and the Baikal-U (RISC-V).<\/p>\n

Those already running Linux on Baikal hardware will need to stay on Linux 6.18 LTS<\/a> or earlier, as newer kernel versions are dropping the support.<\/p>\n

\n

Suggested Read \ud83d\udcd6: <\/strong>The Linux Kernel is Finally Letting Go of i486 CPU Support<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

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Support for Russian Baikal CPUs is being pulled from the Linux kernel. Work has begun in the Linux 7.1 cycle to remove driver code and device tree bindings for Baikal…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catbradley.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}