- The Mips used to compete on Intel and the arm, but now he tries to import again into the fleas ai
- From NASA probes to gaming consoles, MIPs have quietly shaped modern IT before disappearing
- Thirty years after the management of RISC, MIPs is still looking for a stable commercial model
Mips, formerly a central actor in the early RISC revolution and a longtime rival in Arm, has changed his hands again.
This time, in a somewhat ironic turn, the company was acquired by Globalfoundries, the flea manufacturer detached from AMD.
The acquisition indicates yet another chapter in the complex and turbulent history of MIPS, a company whose inheritance extends from the early workstation processors to the food of the PlayStation of Sony Original.
A heritage before modern landmarks
Decades before anyone asks what could be the best laptop for video publishing or the best GPU, Mips already changed the rules.
The company’s journey started in 1986 when the MIPS R2000 became the first commercial processor to implement the set of MIPS instructions and one of the first examples of RISC -based architecture sold in a license model.
John Hennessy, professor at the University of Stanford and co-creator of architecture, led the initiative to offer an alternative to the dominant CISC conceptions of Intel and Motorola.
The R2000 was compact for its time, containing around 110,000 transistors, and delivered clock speeds up to 15 MHz.
Although it has never reached the penetration of the Intel market, the MIPs dug notable successes.
The R3000, introduced two years after the R2000, propelled everything, graphic workstations from silicon to the first generation PlayStation.
He even guided the NASA New Horizons probe through his overflight of Pluto and to the Kuiper belt.
Despite its darkness in traditional conversations today, the Mips have discreetly persisted in key on -board applications.
“MIPs provide a strong heritage to provide effective and evolving intellectual property adapted to critical performance applications,” said COO Niels Anderskouv of Globalfoundries.
The property of the MIPs has frequently moved, revealing a company looking for a stable sole.
After being acquired by silicon graphics in the 1990s, he went into the hands of imagination technologies, Tallwood companies and the computer of the waves.
He reappeared after bankruptcy in 2020 with a pivot to open RISC-V architecture, a decision that many considered an attempt to regain relevance in an increasingly dominated time by open standards.
However, the Evocore series of Mips had a hard time impressive, leading the company to launch its Atlas core range and the Atlas Explorer platform aimed at optimizing performance.
With Globalfoundries acquire the company, the story moves again.
MIPs will now operate as an AIA independent unit, autonomous mobility and industrial edge.
Sameer Wasson, CEO of Mips, says that “being part of Globalfoundries marks the start of a new daring chapter for MIPs”.
However, skepticism remains, in particular given the uncertain trajectory of the wider RISC-V ecosystem.
Via eenewseurope
