Elron ELTAY SC is a credit card-sized SBC powered by an Elvees SKIF “Scythian” quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 SoC that serves as an alternative to the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, Radxa ROCK Pi, etc… for the Russian market.
Getting SBCs in Russia has been more complicated in recent years due to sanctions, although it’s still possible to import Chinese SBCs directly and Raspberry Pi via the grey market. However, the ELTAY SC is meant to provide a more reliable source within Russia since the SBC is manufactured in a facility in Novosibirsk according to servernews.ru.
ELTAY SC specifications:
- SoC – Elvees SKIF “Scythian”
- CPU – Quad-core Arm Cortex-A53 @ 2GHz
- GPU – Imagination PowerVR Series8XE
- VPU – Encode/decode up to two 4K video streams @ 60 Hz
- DSP – 2x DSP
- Process – 28 nm
- System Memory – 4GB LPDDR4
- Storage
- 32GB eMMC flash
- microSD card slot
- Video and Audio Output – Micro HDMI port
- Networking
- 10/100Mbps RJ45 port (via USB to Ethernet chip)
- WiFi 4 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0
- USB – 4x USB 3.0 ports
- Expansion – 40-pin GPIO header with 2x I2C, 2x SPI, 1x UART, 4x PWM, up to 28x GPIO
- Power Supply – 5V via USB-C port
- Dimensions – 85 x 56mm
The ELTAY SC SBC supports “Alt Linux”, a Linux distribution for the Russian market, and the Buildroot build systems. We’re told the board will be mainly used for machine tool building, instrument making, and mechanical engineering.
There’s documentation for the SKIF “architecture” included a 2166-page technical reference manual, a Linux SDK, associated documentation, and more. But obviously, everything is in Russian, so it’s not the easiest to understand if you don’t read the language… The block diagram for the quad-core Cortex-A53 SoC is mostly in English.
I suppose nobody is paying royalties to Arm and Imagination… Elron is also making a few other ELTAY modules and boards, including a Raspberry Pi CM4 carrier board, a Rockchip RK3566 module compatible with Raspberry Pi Compute Modules, and so on. You’ll find more details about all products on the ELTAY product page on Elron’s website.
Thanks to ValdikSS for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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It may be old tech, but at least it’s not using electronic tubes!
It’s a quad code A53, not dual.
The chip is surprisingly beefy: 2×DSP, GPS/Glonass/Beidou, 2×pci-e 3.0 4x, 2×usb 3, 2×1G ethernet, dual-channel DDR.
The English name of the chip is Scythian (Скиф=Scythian, direct translation).
Even the image of the board has “4xA53” printed between the SoC and GPIO pins.
Documentation is great (although all in Russian), flashing tools are open-source, ddrinit code is open-source, the kernel source is a rebased patchset on top of the kernel release, as well as u-boot and armtf.
Everything is surprisingly clean.
Yes, there’s a complete public datasheet for the chip, with complete register specs for the DSPs, GPS correlators and SDR peripherals. This chip is used in the Azart-2 military radio. https://www.cryptomuseum.com/radio/azart2/
The specs on the website read “2хA53”, but now I can see it must be a mistake since it’s 4xA53 on the board and in the TRM.
> I suppose nobody is paying license fees to Arm and Imagination
Why not? This is old tech and even if some restrictions apply license may be purchased before them.
Also, there is bunch of server side products based on ARM.
More issues expected from manufacturing side as there is no local factory with 28 nm process in Russia.
apparently this is being made in russia in 28nm – “since the SBC and its 28nm Elvees SKIF SoC are both manufactured in a facility in Novosibirsk”
It’s not. The SoC is 100% manufactured not in Russia, but it has been developed in Russia.
There’s even not any text on the SoC, only numbers. Guess why.
Sorry, I misunderstood the translation. It looks like Russia aims to have 28nm manufacturing plants in a few years, but those are not ready yet.
Russia is barely scratching 90nm barrier, don’t think 28 is going to happen any realistic time soon. We have 180nm though, NFC chips in biometric passports have the chips manufactured in Micron.
Wow, 90nm, I have been dragged 20 years in the past.
Yes. But 90nm developed in 2025 not same as one from 2005. And for example TSMC still produce 90+ nm products and have 8% revenue from them in 2024.
Russia now have ongoing activity on whole chain: alongside with litography machines large number of chemicals in R&D.
I’ve changed license fees to royalties in the post to be more accurate. Usually, Arm charged a license fee and then royalties based on sales.
> I suppose nobody is paying license fees to Arm and Imagination
I’m 100% sure that they do , because they manufacture all their “modern” chips on Taiwanise fabs like TSMC and Micron, and those guys will notify ARM if you try to use their IP’s illigaly
>The chip is surprisingly beefy
have some doubts here, on paper it looks beefy , but why
they used usb <-> 100M Ethernet despite having 2 1G EMAC controllers ? Why there is no PCIe/CSI/DSI interfaces despite support from chip side ? WiFi 4 802.11n and Bluetooth 4.0 is a limit for their sdr subsystem (even ESP can handle newer standards) ?
and the price – it is around 200$ for something that is less capable than Rpi 3 – good luck with that !
Can Taiwanese fabs produce chips for Russia? Wouldn’t they use SMIC instead?
I’m asking because I genuinely don’t know.
I think nobody know for sure as company not disclose this info.
As I can find there is info only about design and manufacturing board itself in Russia.
> it is around 200$ for something that is less capable than Rpi 3 – good luck with that !
Those are not going to free market.
For free market you can find “Repka Pi” for example.
I see a lot of small holes on the PCB, any idea what is it for?
That’s the test points under white mask I guess
How come we don’t see this in other SBCs?
I remember the RPI, have a few testpoints, maybe 5.
It’s a cam to spy on you 😉
ахуеть!
Great! But, as usually, most of these chips are not available on the market.
Would be nice to see here news about very popular nowadays in Russia – КР1948ВК015 Амур32 (Amur32) RISC-V MCU (almost as gd32 series)