So, MIPS Technologies is ending development of the MIPS architecture, switching to work with systems based on the RISC-V architecture. And for the eighth generation of the MIPS architecture, they decided to build on the developments of the open RISC-V project.
It is worth recalling that the company has changed hands more than once. In 2017, she joined Wave Computing, a startup that develops accelerators for machine learning systems. These devices used MIPS processors. Things weren't going well, so the startup went bankrupt last year. True, he never completed the bankruptcy procedure, since he received investments from the Tallwood venture fund. As a result, a large-scale reorganization was carried out, including a name change - now the company is called MIPS.
Well, not only the name has changed, the management also decided to change the business model , expanding the scope of activities.
Previously, MIPS Technologies was involved in the development of architecture and licensing of intellectual property associated with MIPS processors. The company did not manufacture the chips themselves. But now the reborn organization will start releasing processors, but already based on the RISC-V architecture.
The latter is being developed by the non-profit structure RISC-V International with the participation of the entire developer community. For a number of reasons, MIPS decided not to continue developing its own architecture, but to join the joint work with RISC-V International. An interesting point - MIPS has been a member of RISC-V International for several years, and the technical director of RISC-V International is an ex-MIPS Technologies employee.
RISC-V developments are mostly about an open and flexible machine instruction system that allows you to create microprocessors for a wide variety of industries, without the need for licensing fees and imposing strict conditions on use. Thanks to this concept, RISC-V based processors are completely open.
Based on this architecture, under various free licenses, including BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0, several dozen variants of microprocessor cores, SoCs, and already manufactured chips are being developed. Chips with this architecture are supported by various projects starting with Glibc 2.27, binutils 2.30, gcc 7 and Linux 4.15 kernel.
MIPS architecture was one of the main participants in the "RISC revolution" in the 80s of the last century, together with SPARC, Alpha, PA-RISC. This revolution scared Intel quite a bit - so much so that the company spent several billion on Itanium development. MIPS processors have been used in DEC mini PCs, Silicon Graphics workstations, Nintendo video games and many other systems.
The company went public in 1989, after which Microsoft ported Windows to MIPS. A little later, Silicon Graphics bought out the company's business, spun it off as its own division, which became public in 1998. MIPS was then a direct competitor to ARM, and a stronger competitor.
