Buzz
Both having aluminum casing, with a self-made M1-like processor as above, but not , but rather a product representing a 'breakthrough' of the Russian domestic market, created to serve the needs of government use.
The Bitblaze Titan BM15 laptop was personally held and shared by Ms. Yana Brush, currently the commercial director of Prombit company - Bitblaze's parent company, in a blog post: 'I'm holding a legend in my hand, the pre-production phase of the Bitblaze Titan series on the Baikal-M chip is ready. According to her, this laptop is created by the company with high perfection, 'slim' aluminum casing, lightweight, and capable of performing office tasks like Office or entertainment like watching YouTube very smoothly.
In terms of appearance, the Titan BM15 owns an aluminum outer shell similar to the MacBook, about the thickness and size still unclear but there is information that the machine will weigh around 2.2 kg, equal to the weight of the M1 Pro/Max 16-inch model. Additionally, there is information about a version with a plastic outer shell at a better price, but we don't have much information about this version.
More details about the configuration, this 'M1 chip' laptop is equipped with a 15.6-inch resolution not yet clear, using the M1 chip, specifically the Baikal-M1 with the codename BE-M1000, is an SoC (System on a Chip like M1) with a basic 16GB DDR4 RAM and support for upgrades up to 128GB, along with 256-512GB M2 standard SSD storage. In addition, basic features of a laptop such as WiFi, Bluetooth, 3.5mm jack, USB 3.0, and USB-C are all equipped, even up to 4 USB-A ports and 1 RJ-45 port. Titan BM15 is announced to use the Linux operating system.
More about the Baikal-M1 chip, this is an ARM processor similar to M1 and M2, researched and manufactured by Baikal Electronics. The 'Russian M1' is built on the ARMv8A architecture with 8 Cortex-A57 cores (introduced by ARM in 2012), with a maximum clock speed of 1.5GHz and uses Mali T628 GPU, this chip is made with 28nm process. Looking at the specs, we can see that this chip is still not as powerful as the processors of current mid-range machines. I wonder how Bitblaze will optimize the software for the laptop, whether the machine will be optimized enough to handle 2-3 Youtube tabs simultaneously?
Compared to the M1 chip from Apple, the Russian version of M1 is 'stronger' in terms of standard configuration, Baikal-M1 has a standard RAM of up to 16GB instead of 8GB like Apple. Of course, I'm only comparing the capacity, as for the speed between Unified Memory on Apple M1 and DDR4, it's like comparing a racing plane with a bicycle.
Despite the seemingly ancient configuration, this is a chip line researched and customized by Bitblaze based on the ARM core. Truly, researching and perfecting a processor requires a lot of brainpower and money to invest. Even big companies like find it not easy to create their own processors like the Surge series, but until now it has not been truly successful.
Although admiring the chip design efforts of the company from Russia. However, whether the Titan series equipped with Baikal SoC will succeed or not is still a difficult story to tell. Speaking of manufacturing capability, currently companies in Russia cannot hire TSMC to process chips due to political issues, next is the practical performance of the chip is still a mystery, perhaps with this performance, the machine will not receive encouragement from the majority. Next is the issue of price, estimated the Titan BM15 model priced from 1375 - 1650 USD excluding VAT for the aluminum shell version. The price is comparable to a MacBook but too expensive for a machine with inferior configuration and unknown usage quality.
If you were, would you like to 'put your stake' on Titan BM15 to try it out? Leave a comment below!
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