- MIPS as soon as rivaled Intel and Arm, however now it is making an attempt to matter once more in AI chips
- From NASA probes to gaming consoles, MIPS quietly formed fashionable computing earlier than fading out
- Thirty years after main RISC, MIPS continues to be attempting to find a steady enterprise mannequin
MIPS, as soon as a central participant within the early RISC revolution and a long-time rival to Arm, has as soon as once more modified fingers.
This time, in a considerably ironic twist, the corporate has been acquired by GlobalFoundries, the chip producer spun off from AMD.
The acquisition alerts one more chapter within the advanced and turbulent historical past of MIPS, a agency whose legacy stretches from early workstation CPUs to powering the unique Sony PlayStation.
A legacy earlier than fashionable benchmarks
A long time earlier than anybody requested what the most effective laptop computer for video modifying or the most effective GPU is likely to be, MIPS was already altering the principles.
The corporate’s journey started in 1986 when the MIPS R2000 grew to become the primary business CPU to implement the MIPS instruction set and one of many earliest examples of RISC-based structure bought underneath a licensing mannequin.
John Hennessy, a professor at Stanford College and co-creator of the structure, led the initiative to supply a substitute for the dominant CISC designs of Intel and Motorola.
The R2000 was compact for its time, containing round 110,000 transistors, and delivered clock speeds as much as 15MHz.
Though it by no means achieved the market penetration of Intel, MIPS carved out notable successes.
The R3000, launched two years after the R2000, powered all the things from Silicon Graphics workstations to the first-generation Sony PlayStation.
It even guided NASA’s New Horizons probe via its Pluto flyby and onward to the Kuiper Belt.
Regardless of its obscurity in mainstream conversations right now, MIPS quietly continued in key embedded purposes.
“MIPS brings a powerful heritage of delivering environment friendly, scalable compute IP tailor-made for performance-critical purposes,” mentioned GlobalFoundries’ COO Niels Anderskouv.
Possession of MIPS has shifted steadily, revealing an organization looking for steady footing.
After being acquired by Silicon Graphics within the Nineties, it handed via the fingers of Creativeness Applied sciences, Tallwood Ventures, and Wave Computing.
It reemerged post-bankruptcy in 2020 with a pivot towards the open RISC-V structure, a transfer many noticed as an try to regain relevance in an period more and more dominated by open requirements.
Nonetheless, MIPS’s eVocore collection struggled to impress, main the corporate to launch its Atlas vary of cores and the Atlas Explorer platform aimed toward efficiency optimization.
With GlobalFoundries buying the agency, the narrative shifts once more.
MIPS will now function as a standalone unit centered on AI, autonomous mobility, and the commercial edge.
Sameer Wasson, MIPS CEO, claims, “Turning into a part of GlobalFoundries marks the beginning of a daring new chapter for MIPS.”
Nonetheless, skepticism stays, notably given the unsure trajectory of the broader RISC-V ecosystem.
By way of eenewseurope
