MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the

MIPS architecture MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking, embedded, Internet of things and mobile applications. MIPS was founded in 1984 to commercialize the work being carried out at Stanford University on the

, a pioneering RISC design. The company generated intense interest in the late 1980s, seeing design wins with

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) and

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and sof ...

(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 Imagination Technologies Limited is a British semiconductor and software design company owned by Canyon Bridge Capital Partners, a private equity fund based in Beijing that is ultimately owned by the Chinese government. With its global headquar ...

, best known for their PowerVR graphics processor family. They were sold to Tallwood Venture Capital in 2017 and then purchased soon after by Wave Computing in 2018. Wave declared bankruptcy in 2020, emerging in 2021 as MIPS and announcing that the MIPS architecture was being abandoned in favor of

RISC-V RISC-V (pronounced "risk-five" where five refers to the number of generations of RISC architecture that were developed at the University of California, Berkeley since 1981) is an open standard instruction set architecture (ISA) based on estab ...

designs.

History

MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984 by a group of researchers from Stanford University that included

John L. Hennessy John Leroy Hennessy (born September 22, 1952) is an American computer scientist, academician and businessman who serves as Chairman of Alphabet Inc. Hennessy is one of the founders of MIPS Computer Systems Inc. as well as Atheros and served as t ...

and Chris Rowen. These researchers had worked on a project called MIPS (for ''Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages''), one of the projects that pioneered the RISC concept. Other principal founders were Skip Stritter, formerly a Motorola technologist, and John Moussouris, formerly of IBM. The initial CEO was Vaemond Crane, formerly President and CEO of Computer Consoles Inc., who arrived in February 1985 and departed in June 1989. He was replaced by Bob Miller, a former senior IBM and Data General executive. Miller ran the company through its IPO and subsequent sale to Silicon Graphics. In 1986, MIPS Computer Systems designs were noticed by companies such as Cadnetix,

Prime Computer Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of ...

and

(SGI), these adopting the R2000 for new products, with SGI adopting the MIPS architecture for its computers having noted that the Motorola 68000 series of processors was "at the end of its price-performance curve". Identifying the "time-to-market issues" of companies introducing workstation products, MIPS introduced a range of component kits, processor boards and memory boards, intended as "building blocks" for such companies to build into systems. Additionally, development systems such as the M/500 were sold, intended to support software development at systems vendors building MIPS-based hardware products. In December 1989, MIPS held its first IPO. That year,

(DEC) released a Unix workstation based on the MIPS design. After developing the R2000 and

R3000 The R3000 is a 32-bit RISC microprocessor chipset developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implemented the MIPS I instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in June 1988, it was the second MIPS implementation, succeeding the R2000 as the flag ...

microprocessors, a management change brought along the larger dreams of being a computer vendor. The company found itself unable to compete in the computer market against much larger companies and was struggling to support the costs of developing both the chips and the systems (

MIPS Magnum The MIPS Magnum was a line of computer workstations designed by MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and based on the MIPS series of RISC microprocessors. The first Magnum was released in March, 1990, and production of various models continued until 1993 ...

). To secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit

R4000 The R4000 is a microprocessor developed by MIPS Computer Systems that implements the MIPS III instruction set architecture (ISA). Officially announced on 1 October 1991, it was one of the first 64-bit microprocessors and the first MIPS III implem ...

), SGI acquired the company in 1992 for $333 millionComputer History Museum.
Silicon Graphics Professional IRIS 4D/50GT
" Retrieved September 19, 2011. and renamed it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI. During SGI's ownership of MIPS, the company introduced the

R8000 The R8000 is a microprocessor chipset developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), Toshiba, and Weitek.Hsu 1994 It was the first implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture. The R8000 is also known as the ''TFP'', for ''Tremendous ...

in 1994 and the

R10000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowe ...

in 1996 and a follow up the

R12000 The R10000, code-named "T5", is a RISC microprocessor implementation of the MIPS IV instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Technologies, Inc. (MTI), then a division of Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI). The chief designers are Chris Rowe ...

in 1997. During this time, two future microprocessors code-named ''The Beast'' and ''Capitan'' were in development; these were cancelled after SGI decided to migrate to the

Itanium Itanium ( ) is a discontinued family of 64-bit Intel microprocessors that implement the Intel Itanium architecture (formerly called IA-64). Launched in June 2001, Intel marketed the processors for enterprise servers and high-performance comput ...

architecture in 1998. As a result, MIPS was spun out as an intellectual property licensing company, offering licences to the MIPS architecture as well as microprocessor core designs. On June 30, 1998, MIPS held an IPO after raising about with an offering price of a share. In 1999, SGI announced it would overhaul its operations; it planned to continue introducing new MIPS processors until 2002, but its server business would include Intel's processor architectures as well. SGI spun MIPS out completely on June 20, 2000 by distributing all its interest as stock dividend to the stockholders. In early 2008 MIPS laid off 28 employees from its processor business group. On August 13, 2008, MIPS announced a loss of $108.5 million for their fiscal fourth-quarter and that they would lay off another 15% of their workforce. At the time MIPS had 512 employees.Suzanne Deffree, EDN News,
MIPS plans 15% layoff on $108.5M loss
" August 14, 2008. Retrieved March 4, 2012. In May 2018, according to the company's presence on LinkedIn, there may be less than 50 employees. Some notable people who worked in MIPS:

James Billmaier James Billmaier (born May 10, 1955) is an American technology businessman, inventor, and author. He is currently the co-founder and CEO of TurboPatent Corporation and author of his most recent book, ''Beyond Innovation''...''INVENTIONEERING: The s ...

Steve Blank Steve Blank (born 1953) is an American entrepreneur, educator, author and speaker based in Pescadero, California. Blank created the customer development method that launched the lean startup movement, a methodology that recognized that startups ...

, Joseph DiNucci,

David Hitz David Hitz is an American engineer. In 1992, he, James Lau, and Michael Malcolm founded NetApp, where he became an executive vice president. A graduate of Deep Springs College, Hitz earned a BSE from Princeton University and went on to work as ...

, Earl Killian, Dan Levin,

John Mashey John R. Mashey (born 1946) is an American computer scientist, director and entrepreneur. Career Mashey holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Pennsylvania State University, where he developed the ASSIST assembler language teaching software. He wo ...

, John P. McCaskey, Bob Miller,

Stratton Sclavos Stratton Sclavos (born 1961) is an entrepreneur, chief executive, and venture investor in the technology, professional sports and lifestyle industries. He is currently a partner at Vision Venture Partners. He served as chairman and CEO of VeriSig ...

. and Skip Stritter. Board members included: Bill Davidow. In 2010, Sandeep Vij was named CEO of MIPS Technologies.Junko Yoshida, EE Times.
New CEO Sandeep Vij forms ‘Team MIPS’
" February 7, 2010. Retrieved September 20, 2011. Vij studied under Dr. John Hennessy as a Stanford University grad student. Prior to taking over at MIPS, Vij was an executive at

Cavium Networks Cavium was a fabless semiconductor company based in San Jose, California, specializing in ARM-based and MIPS-based network, video and security processors and SoCs. The company was co-founded in 2000 by Syed B. Ali and M. Raghib Hussain, who wer ...

Xilinx Xilinx, Inc. ( ) was an American technology and semiconductor company that primarily supplied programmable logic devices. The company was known for inventing the first commercially viable field-programmable gate array (FPGA) and creating the ...

and

Altera Altera Corporation was a manufacturer of programmable logic devices (PLDs) headquartered in San Jose, California. It was founded in 1983 and acquired by Intel in 2015. The main product lines from Altera were the flagship Stratix series, mid-ran ...

. EE Times reported that MIPS had 150 employees as of November 1, 2010. If the August 14, 2008 EDN article was accurate about MIPS having over 500 employees at the time, then MIPS reduced their total workforce by 70% between 2008 and 2010. MIPS by Imagination logo

In addition to its main R&D centre in Sunnyvale, California, MIPS has engineering facilities in

Shanghai Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flowin ...

, China, Beaverton, Oregon,

Bristol Bristol () is a city, ceremonial county and unitary authority in England. Situated on the River Avon, it is bordered by the ceremonial counties of Gloucestershire to the north and Somerset to the south. Bristol is the most populous city in ...

and Kings Langley, both in

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It also has offices in Hsin-chu,

Taiwan Taiwan, officially the Republic of China (ROC), is a country in East Asia, at the junction of the East and South China Seas in the northwestern Pacific Ocean, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) to the northwest, Japan to the nort ...

;

Tokyo, Japan Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, with an estimated 37.468 ...

; Remscheid,

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

and

Haifa, Israel Haifa ( he, חֵיפָה ' ; ar, حَيْفَا ') is the third-largest city in Israel—after Jerusalem and Tel Aviv—with a population of in . The city of Haifa forms part of the Haifa metropolitan area, the third-most populous metropol ...

.Company Press Release.
Synopsys Acquires Analog Business Group of MIPS Technologies
" May 8, 2009. Retrieved May 8, 2009. During the first quarter of 2013, 498 out of 580 of MIPS patents were sold to Bridge Crossing which was created by Allied Security Trust, with all processor-specific patents and the other parts of the company sold to Imagination Technologies Group. Imagination had outbid Ceva Inc to buy MIPS with an offer of $100 million, and was investing to develop the architecture for the embedded processor market. In 2017, under financial pressure itself, Imagination Technologies sold the MIPS processor business to a California-based investment company, Tallwood Venture Capital. Tallwood in turn sold the business to Wave Computing in 2018, both of these companies reportedly having their origins with, or ownership links to, a co-founder of

Chips and Technologies Chips and Technologies (C&T), founded in Milpitas, California in December 1984 by Gordon A. Campbell and Dado Banatao, was an early fabless semiconductor company. Its first product, announced September 1985, was a four chip EGA chipset that ...

and

S3 Graphics S3 Graphics, Ltd (commonly referred to as S3) was an American computer graphics company. The company sold the Trio, ViRGE, Savage 3D, and Chrome series of graphics processors. Struggling against competition from 3dfx Interactive, ATI and Nvid ...

. Despite the regulatory obstacles that had forced Imagination to divest itself of the MIPS business prior to its own acquisition by Canyon Bridge, bankruptcy proceedings for Wave Computing indicated that the company had in 2018 and 2019 transferred full licensing rights for the MIPS architecture for China, Hong Kong and Macau to CIP United, a Shanghai-based company.

Company timeline

Products

MIPS Technologies created the processor architecture that is licensed to chip makers. Before the acquisition, the company had 125+ licensees who ship more than 500 million MIPS-based processors each year.Brian Caufield, Forbes.
For MIPS, Less is More
" April 20, 2011. Retrieved September 26, 2011. MIPS processor architectures and cores are used in home entertainment, networkingJunko Yoshida, EE Times.
‘Blow-out quarter’ highlights MIPS comeback
" August 5, 2010. Retrieved October 1, 2011. and communications products. The company licensed its 32- and 64-bit architectures as well as 32-bit cores. The MIPS32 architecture is a high-performance 32-bit instruction set architecture (ISA) that is used in applications such as 32-bit microcontrollers, home entertainment, home networking devices and mobile designs.Robert Cravotta, Embedded Insights.
M14K
" Retrieved October 3, 2011. MIPS customers license the architecture to develop their own processors or license off-the-shelf cores from MIPS that are based on the architecture. The MIPS64 architecture is a high performance 64-bit instruction set architecture that is widely used in networking infrastructure equipment through MIPS licensees such as Cavium Networks and Broadcom. SmartCE (Connected Entertainment) is a reference platform that integrates Android,

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Fla ...

platform for TV,

Skype Skype () is a proprietary telecommunications application operated by Skype Technologies, a division of Microsoft, best known for VoIP-based videotelephony, videoconferencing and voice calls. It also has instant messaging, file transfer, deb ...

, the Home Jinni ConnecTV application and other applications.Dean Takahashi, VentureBeat.
MIPS aims to drive into consumer electronics gear
"January 5, 2010. Retrieved October 5, 2011. SmartCE lets OEM customers create integrated products more quickly.

MIPS processor core families

The MIPS processor cores are divided by Imagination into three major families: * Warrior: hardware virtualization, hardware multi-threading, and SIMD ** M-class: M5100 and M5150, M6200 and M6250 ** I-class: I6400, I7200 ** P-class: P5600, P6600 * Aptiv: ''microAptiv'' (compact, real-time embedded processor core), ''interAptiv'' (multiprocessor, multi-threaded core with a nine-stage pipeline), ''proAptiv'' (super-scalar, deeply out-of-order processor core with high CoreMark/MHz score) * Classic. 4K, M14K, 24K, 34K, 74K, 1004K (multicore and multithreaded) and 1074K (superscalar and multithreaded) families.

Licensees

MIPS Technologies had a strong customer licensee base in home electronics and portable media players; for example, 75 percent of

Blu-ray The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of st ...

Disc players were running on MIPS Technologies processors. In the digital home, the company's processors were predominantly found in digital TVs and set-top boxes. The

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

PlayStation Portable used two processors based on the MIPS32 4K processor. Within the networking segment, licensees include Cavium Networks and Broadcom. Cavium has used up to 48 MIPS cores for its OCTEON family network reference designs. Broadcom ships Linux-ready MIPS64-based XLP, XLR, and XLS multicore, multithreaded processors. Licensees using MIPS to build smartphones and tablets include

Actions Semiconductor Actions Semiconductor Co. Ltd. () is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company founded in 2000 and headquartered in Zhuhai, Guangdong province. The company has about 600 employees and designs SoCs for tablets, digital audio players, photo viewers ...

and

Ingenic Semiconductor Ingenic Semiconductor is a Chinese fabless semiconductor company based in Beijing, China founded in 2005. They purchased licenses for the MIPS architecture instruction sets in 2009 and design CPU-microarchitectures based on them. They also design ...

. Tablets based on MIPS include the Cruz tablets from Velocity Micro.

TCL Corporation TCL Technology (originally an abbreviation for Telephone Communication Limited) is a Chinese electronics company headquartered in Huizhou, Guangdong Province. It designs, develops, manufactures, and sells consumer products including televisi ...

is using MIPS processors for the development of smartphones. Companies can also obtain an MIPS ''architectural licence'' for designing their own CPU cores using the MIPS architecture. Distinct MIPS architecture implementations by licensees include Broadcom's BRCM 5000. Other licensees include

Broadcom Broadcom Inc. is an American designer, developer, manufacturer and global supplier of a wide range of semiconductor and infrastructure software products. Broadcom's product offerings serve the data center, networking, software, broadband, wirel ...

, which has developed MIPS-based CPUs for over a decade,

Microchip Technology Microchip Technology Inc. is a publicly-listed American corporation that manufactures microcontroller, mixed-signal, analog and Flash-IP integrated circuits. Its products include microcontrollers ( PIC, dsPIC, AVR and SAM), Serial EEPROM ...

, which leverages MIPS processors for its 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers,

Qualcomm Atheros Qualcomm Atheros is a developer of semiconductor chips for network communications, particularly wireless chipsets. Founded under the name T-Span Systems in 1998 by experts in signal processing and VLSI design from Stanford University, the Un ...

MediaTek MediaTek Inc. () is a Taiwanese fabless semiconductor company that provides chips for wireless communications, high-definition television, handheld mobile devices like smartphones and tablet computers, navigation systems, consumer multimedia ...

and

Mobileye Mobileye Global Inc. is a company developing autonomous driving technologies and advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS) including cameras, computer chips and software. Mobileye was acquired by Intel in 2017 and went public again in 2022. Mobi ...

, whose EyeQ chips are based on cores licensed from MIPS.

Operating systems

MIPS is widely supported by Unix-like systems, including

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, w ...

, FreeBSD, NetBSD, and OpenBSD. Google's processor-agnostic Android operating system is built on the Linux kernel. MIPS originally ported Android to its architecture for embedded products beyond the

mobile handset A mobile phone, cellular phone, cell phone, cellphone, handphone, hand phone or pocket phone, sometimes shortened to simply mobile, cell, or just phone, is a portable telephone that can make and receive calls over a radio frequency link whil ...

, where it was originally targeted by Google but MIPS support was dropped in 2018. In 2010, MIPS and its licensee Sigma Designs announced the world's first Android set-top boxes. By porting to Android, MIPS processors power smartphones and tablets running on the Android operating system.

OpenWrt OpenWrt (from ''open wireless router'') is an open-source project for embedded operating systems based on Linux, primarily used on embedded devices to route network traffic. The main components are Linux, util-linux, musl, and BusyBox. All ...

is an embedded operating system based on the Linux kernel. While it currently runs on a variety of processor architectures, it was originally developed for the

Linksys WRT54G The Linksys WRT54G Wi-Fi series is a series of Wi-Fi–capable residential gateways marketed by Linksys, a subsidiary of Cisco from 2003 until acquired by Belkin in 2013. A ''residential gateway'' connects a local area network (such as a home netw ...

, which used a 32-bit MIPS processor from Broadcom. The OpenWrt Table of Hardware now includes MIPS-based devices from Atheros, Broadcom, Cavium, Lantiq, MediaTek, etc. Real-time operating systems that run on MIPS include

CMX Systems CMX Editing Systems (also known as CMX Systems) was a company founded jointly by CBS and Memorex; with help from many individuals such as Ronald Lee Martin, who later became a head of Universal Studios; that developed some of the very first compu ...

eCosCentric eCosCentric Limited is a privately held company dedicated to Open-source software, open source software, with a distinct focus on eCos (Embedded Configurable Operating System). Founded in 2002 by the original eCos developers, it has headquarters ...

eCos The Embedded Configurable Operating System (eCos) is a free and open-source real-time operating system intended for embedded systems and applications which need only one process with multiple threads. It is designed to be customizable to prec ...

, ENEA OSE, Express Logic's ThreadX,Edward Lamie, EE Times.
Real-Time Embedded Multithreading: Using ThreadX and MIPS
" February 2009. Retrieved October 2, 2011.

FreeRTOS FreeRTOS is a real-time operating system kernel for embedded devices that has been ported to 35 microcontroller platforms. It is distributed under the MIT License. History The FreeRTOS kernel was originally developed by Richard Barry around ...

Green Hills Software Green Hills Software is a privately owned company that builds operating systems and programming tools for embedded systems. The firm was founded in 1982 by Dan O'Dowd and Carl Rosenberg. Its world headquarters are in Santa Barbara, California. ...

Integrity Integrity is the practice of being honest and showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. In ethics, integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one's actions. In ...

LynuxWorks Lynx Software Technologies, Inc. (formerly LynuxWorks) is a San Jose, California software company founded in 1988. Lynx specializes in secure virtualization and open, reliable, certifiable real-time operating systems (RTOSes). Originally known as ...

LynxOS The LynxOS RTOS is a Unix-like real-time operating system from Lynx Software Technologies (formerly "LynuxWorks"). Sometimes known as the Lynx Operating System, LynxOS features full POSIX conformance and, more recently, Linux compatibility. Ly ...

, Mentor Graphics, Micrium's Micro-Controller Operating Systems (µC/OS), QNX Software Systems'

QNX QNX ( or ) is a commercial Unix-like real-time operating system, aimed primarily at the embedded systems market. QNX was one of the first commercially successful microkernel operating systems. The product was originally developed in the early ...

, Quadros Systems Inc.'s RTXC™ Quadros RTOS, Segger's embOS and Wind River's

VxWorks VxWorks is a real-time operating system (or RTOS) developed as proprietary software by Wind River Systems, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Aptiv. First released in 1987, VxWorks is designed for use in embedded systems requiring real-time, determi ...

History

Company timeline

Products

MIPS processor core families

Licensees

Operating systems

See also

References

Further reading