MIPS Technologies

37°25′12″N 122°04′22″W / 37.4201°N 122.0728°W / 37.4201; -122.0728

MIPS Tech LLC
Formerly
  • MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. (1984–1992)
  • MIPS Technologies, Inc. (1992–2021)
Company typePrivate
Nasdaq: MIPS (1998–2013)
IndustryRISC microprocessors
Founded1984 (1984)
Founders
HeadquartersSan Jose, California, U.S.
Key people
  • Sameer Wasson (CEO)
ProductsSemiconductor intellectual property
Number of employees
up to 50 (according to LinkedIn in May 2018), previously 146 (September 2010)
Parent
Websitemips.com

MIPS Tech LLC,[1] formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and MIPS Technologies, Inc., is an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it.[2][3] MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, embedded, Internet of things and mobile applications.[4][5]

MIPS was founded in 1984 to commercialize the work being carried out at Stanford University on the MIPS architecture, a pioneering RISC design. The company generated intense interest in the late 1980s, seeing design wins with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Silicon Graphics (SGI), among others. By the early 1990s the market was crowded with new RISC designs and further design wins were limited. The company was purchased by SGI in 1992, by that time its only major customer, and won several new designs in the game console space. In 1998, SGI announced they would be transitioning off MIPS and spun off the company.

After several years operating as an independent design house, in 2013 the company was purchased by Imagination Technologies, best known for their PowerVR graphics processor family.[6] They were sold to Tallwood Venture Capital in 2017 and then purchased soon after by Wave Computing in 2018.[7] Wave declared bankruptcy in 2020, emerging in 2021 as MIPS and announcing that the MIPS architecture was being abandoned in favor of RISC-V designs.[8]

In May 2022, MIPS previewed its first RISC-V CPU IP cores, the eVocore P8700 and I8500 multiprocessors.[9] In December 2022, MIPS announced availability of the P8700.[10]

  1. ^ "Privacy Policy". MIPS.com. MIPS Tech. 2024. Retrieved March 15, 2024.
  2. ^ Gantz, John (October 14, 1991). "MIPS will have a tough time in a crowded market". InfoWorld. Vol. 13, no. 41. p. 137.
  3. ^ Computer History Museum. "John Hennessy: 2007 Fellow Awards Recipient Archived October 3, 2012, at the Wayback Machine." 2007. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
  4. ^ Agam Shah, IDG. "MIPS Porting Google's Android 3.0 OS for Its Processors." April 26, 2011. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
  5. ^ Sam Dean, Ostatic. "MIPS Advances its Android Plans – Outside of Phones Archived September 16, 2011, at the Wayback Machine." August 3, 2009. Retrieved September 16, 2011.
  6. ^ "Completion of sale of MIPS" (Press release). October 25, 2017.
  7. ^ Smith, Ryan. "MIPS Acquired by AI Hardware Vendor Wave Computing". Anand Tech. Retrieved June 16, 2018.
  8. ^ "Wait, What? MIPS Becomes RISC-V". EEJournal. March 8, 2021. Retrieved March 24, 2021.
  9. ^ Dahad, Nitin (May 12, 2022). "MIPS pivots to RISC-V, targets high performance processing". Embedded.com. Retrieved August 8, 2023.
  10. ^ Leibson, Steven. "MIPS Joins The RISC-V Gang". Forbes. Retrieved August 8, 2023.

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