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• APPROACHES TO MIDDLEWARE UNIFICATION FOR ROBOTIC SYSTEMS ON THE ELBRUS HARDWARE–SOFTWARE PLATFORM

  N.А. Bocharov , К.А. Suminov , М.А. Kirilyuk , N.B. Paramonov

  2026-04-29

  Abstract ▼

  Import substitution of hardware–software control systems is a key enabler for the development of Russia’s domestic robotics industry. The limited software ecosystem of Russian computing platforms still constrains their use in onboard computing systems (OCS) of robotic systems (RS), even though modern domestic multicore processors—such as the Elbrus—offer competitive performance and energy efficiency. ROS (Robot Operating System) and its successor ROS 2 are widely adopted for robotics software development, but official support is largely restricted to x86 and ARM architectures running mainstream Linux distributions. At the same time, a substantial amount of deployed application software remains ROS-based, while ROS 2 continues to evolve rapidly. This creates a practical need to support both ROS and ROS 2 on domestic hardware–software platforms. This work investigates approaches to unifying robotics middleware based on ROS and ROS 2 for the Elbrus platform. We implemented two porting strategies:
  (1) application-level binary translation and (2) a fully native build. The native approach included adapting architecture-specific dependencies, modifying architecture-dependent code, and producing Debian (deb) packages. We then evaluated both approaches under multiple runtime configurations, including scenarios where ROS and ROS 2 operate together. Experimental results confirm that the Elbrus platform can be integrated into the modern robotics software ecosystem. They also show that the native implementation delivers higher performance than the binary-translated solution. The proposed work expands the toolchain available for robotics development on domestic platforms and reduces technological dependence when building control systems for robotic systems.

• PERFORMANCE OF THE ELBRUS-8SV MICROPROCESSOR FOR TECHNICAL VISION TASKS UNDER POWER CONSTRAINTS

  N.A. Bocharov, A.G. Zuev, О. А. Slavin

  2021-04-04

  Abstract ▼

  Research in the field of creating specialized computing systems for robots is conducted in
  many world scientific centers, including our country. The development of capabilities of sensor
  systems, global navigation systems, growth of computing power and improvement of algorithms
  allow creating onboard computing systems with broad intellectual capabilities. An important, butunsolved problem remains the equipping of such computing systems with domestically produced
  microprocessors. The emergence of domestic computing systems and software of the new generation,
  such as microprocessor "Elbrus-8SV" and OS “Elbrus” opens up new opportunities for developers
  of robotic complexes. The peak performance of "Elbrus-8SV" microprocessor is more
  than 0.25 TFLOPS of double precision, which allows solving computationally complex tasks, such
  as technical vision tasks, on the microprocessor. Another important requirement of onboard computing
  technology, in addition to computational power, is low power consumption. As a rule, on
  general-purpose microprocessors, high performance is impossible with low power consumption,
  and specialized processors, such as vector or neuroprocessors, are used to solve computationally
  complex technical vision tasks. To reduce the power consumption of general-purpose microprocessors,
  there are special methods, among which the authors considered: switching off the physical
  cores, reducing the clock frequency, switching off the pipeline, switching off synchronous pulses
  in the idle state. The authors reviewed typical technical vision tasks solved by onboard computing
  systems. An experiment was conducted to estimate power consumption and execution time of
  vision algorithms when the clock frequency is reduced and the microprocessor cores are switched
  off. The experiments showed the possibility to decrease the power consumption of the Elbrus-8SV
  microprocessor cores by 36-46% with an increase in the program execution time. Based on the
  results of the experiment, conclusions were made about the applicability of the Elbrus-8SV microprocessor
  for creating advanced onboard computing systems with the ability to operate both in
  high performance mode and with reduced power consumption. The results obtained by the authors
  indicate the prospects of import substitution in the field of robotics.

• COM-EXPRESS MODULES BASED ON ELBRUS MICROPROCESSORS FOR ONBOARD COMPUTING SYSTEMS

  N.А. Bocharov, А.V. Glukhov, N. B. Paramonov

  2022-04-21

  Abstract ▼

  Research in the field of creating specialized computing systems for robots is conducted in
  many world scientific centers, including our country. The development of capabilities of sensor
  systems, global navigation systems, growth of computing power and improvement of algorithms
  allow creating onboard computing systems with broad intellectual capabilities. An important, but
  unsolved problem remains the equipping of such computing systems with domestically produced
  microprocessors. The need to take into account the maximum weight and size characteristics, the
  requirements for the cooling system of the computing complex, the requirements for on-boardpower supply and power consumption, performance requirements and external interfaces cause
  the complexity and high cost of developing on-board computing systems. The lack of unification of
  computing modules during development creates additional difficulties for developers of robots,
  increases the final cost of the robot and complicates its modernization. The use of a standardized
  form factor such as COM-Express makes it possible to divide the onboard computing complex into
  a universal high-tech system part and a carrier board. The microprocessor, peripheral interface
  controller, RAM and hard disk are placed on the system module, which is produced in large quantities
  and can be replaced with a newer one when new generations of domestic computing equipment
  appear. The carrier board, in turn, is easy to develop and cheap to manufacture, and according
  to its characteristics can be configured for a specific robotic complex. This article discusses
  COM-Express modules based on domestic Elbrus microprocessors. Their applicability for the
  creation of promising on-board computing systems is shown. The results obtained by the authors
  indicate the prospects of import substitution in the field of robotics.

• RESEARCH OF APPLICABILITY LIMITATIONS FOR ELBRUS MICROPROCESSORS FOR SOLVING TASKS OF TECHNICAL VISION

  К. А. Suminov, N. А. Bocharov

  2022-04-21

  Abstract ▼

  One of the key areas in the artificial intelligence is technical vision. For resource-intensive
  tasks of technical vision high-performance, computing systems are created with use of specialized
  accelerators. The use of such accelerators is necessary due to the inability of general-purpose
  microprocessors (GPM) to solve such problems in a given time due to a high computational load.
  However, the microprocessors of Elbrus series are successfully used to solve technical vision
  problems in both server and on-board modes, and the appearance of the sixth-generation Elbrus
  microprocessors should further improve performance on such tasks. Due to the high cost, greater
  complexity and limitations in the use of systems with specialized accelerators, the question arises
  of determining the conditions under which, it is sufficient to use CPU’s to solve the tasks of technical
  vision, for example, with the microprocessors of the Elbrus series without special accelerators.
  One of the most resource-intensive tasks in the field of technical vision are detection and
  classification of objects. For the detection of objects one of the popular methods is the Viola-Jones
  method. Convolutional neural networks are usually used to solve the classification problem.Mathematical models of computations have been developed for VGG16 and VGG19 neural networks
  in relation to the actual microprocessors of the Elbrus series. Using the developed models,
  the theoretical sufficiency of the performance of Elbrus microprocessors for technical vision tasks
  is substantiated. Also, based on these methods, programs for modeling detection and classifications
  objects in the image and video stream have been developed. The programs are written in
  C++ using the OpenCV library, OPO Elbrus, the GNS Platform library and the ImageNet competition
  database. Using the implemented programs, comparative testing was carried out on a number
  of high-performance computing systems with Elbrus and Intel CPU’s and NVidia video card.
  Based on the results obtained, it is shown that the Elbrus-8S is sufficient to solve the problem of
  searching for objects in the image for input resolutions up to 1920 x 1080, where the processing
  speed of the video stream is more than 20 frames per second.