given the interest to the platform, it seems somebody in Russia can run a niche business - an Elbrus CPU cloud service, i.e. a garage with a bunch of Elbrus-es (though it is pretty pricey - the 1-4 socket systems with Elbrus 8S cost $5-$20K)

Btw, couple months ago MCST established an official public forum for Elbrus users/partners/etc. Mostly in Russian, though most people there would understand English too. That is performance numbers - various Elbrus-es vs. i7 2600 - posted by a user there http://forum.elbrus.ru/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=6193