Russians Soon To Get Laptops With Its Homegrown Baikal M1 CPUs, First BitBlaze PC Shows Up & Listed Online

Russian-based company Bitblaze, a brand specializing in servers, workstations, & storage systems, has revealed the Bitblaze Titan BM15 laptop. This pre-production system is based around the Baikal M1 processor which is an ARM chip manufactured for the Russian domestic market.

Baikal M1 CPU-based Russian laptop will be their final Arm version, reports company BitBlaze

A laptop focused on users of government agencies, and the enthusiast market will start shipping the system in full scale by November 2022. However, with TSMC not currently manufacturing any chips for Russian consumers, it is unsure if Bitblaze will accomplish this feat.

I have a legend in my hands: a pre-production Bitblaze Titan laptop based on the Baikal-M processor is ready. A very decent built quality, thin aluminum case, light weight. I have tested some mainstream software applications: office programs and YouTube. Works great, lasts five hours on the battery. We continue testing in various workloads, getting ready for the official release.

— Yana Brush, commercial director, Prombit (owners of BitBlaze)

The new laptop system, Prombit's Bitblaze Titan BM15, offers a 15.6" screen, uses the Baikal Electronics SoC Baikal-M1, and offers 16GB of DDR4 memory. The laptop will support up to 128GB of DDR4 memory. Depending on the configuration, the computer also provides a 250GB to 512GB M.2 SSD. Options like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 3.0 Type-C, four USB Type-A connectors, HDMI, and a 3.5mm audio connection are included.

While the system is encased in aluminum, it is unknown what the new laptop's weight or exact size is. In March of this year, 3DNews reported that the computer would weigh 4.85 pounds.

On the company's website, you can see the new laptop to be offered by the company. The laptop is reminiscent of the Apple MacBook Pro 13. However, the system on display is not the exact physical matching that Brush holds in promotional photos. The model she has looks like a standard mobile notebook, ranging from $399 to $499, and is located at Best Buy. It could be a model for testing purposes, as those will sometimes not represent the final product. It is also unknown what Linux versions the system would run if any.

The processor used for the new BM15 is an Arm Cortex A57 CPU which offers 8-cores, clock speeds of 1.50 GHz, 8 MB of L3 cache, and an Arm Mali-T628 GPU offering dual display pipelines. The processor dates back to 2014, and there is concern that the product, even with the "Titan" name in the title, is fragile. The Baikal-M1 is reported to be manufactured by TSMC using the 28nm process, but TSMC does not produce chips for any Russian companies and has not for some time. It is unknown how many SoCs were purchased from the chip fabricator before canceling shipments to Russian sectors.

There is a chance to buy one of the pre-production samples, that is expensive. Or rather wait for [mass produced units], which will be released no earlier than November. We accept pre-orders.

Bitblaze Titan is expected to retail for $1375 to $1650 before VAT costs. This price is relatively high for this configuration, but the BOM was still being concluded, meaning the final cost may vary.

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