MIPS Technologies

MIPS Technologies, Inc.
Type Public: (NASDAQ: MIPS)
Industry RISC microprocessors
Founded 1984
Headquarters Sunnyvale, California, United States
Key people Sandeep Vij
Products Processor IP
Employees 146 (September 2010)
Website mips.com

MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIPS), formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., is a semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips.[1][2] MIPS provides processor architectures and cores for digital home, networking and mobile applications.[3][4]

MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984[5][6] by a group of researchers from Stanford University that included John L. Hennessy, as a vendor of microprocessor chips.[7]

In 1988, MIPS Computer Systems designs were noticed by Silicon Graphics (SGI) and the company adopted the MIPS architecture for its computers.[8] A year later, in December 1989, MIPS held its first IPO (after which it was acquired by Silicon Graphics (SGI), later spun off, then IPOed again in 1998).[9]

After developing the R2000 and R3000 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). To secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit R4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992[10] for $333 million[11][12] and re-named it as MIPS Technologies Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.[13]

During SGI's ownership of MIPS, the company introduced the R8000 in 1994 and the R10000[14] in 1996 and a follow up the R12000 in 1997.[15] 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 architecture[16] in 1998.[17][11] 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 $16.3 million with an offering price of $14 dollars a share.[18][8] 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.[19] SGI spun MIPS out completely on June 20, 2000 by distributing all its interest as stock dividend to the stockholders.

Some notable people who worked in MIPS: David Hitz[20], Joseph DiNucci[21], James Billmaier[22], Steve Blank[23], Dan Levin[24], Bob Miller[25], Skip Stritter[26], John L. Hennessy[27], John Mashey[28], John P. McCaskey, Stratton Sclavos[29]. Board members included: Bill Davidow.

In 2010, Sandeep Vij was named CEO of MIPS Technologies.[30] Vij studied under Dr. John Hennessy as a Stanford University grad student.[30] Prior to taking over at MIPS, Vij was an executive at Cavium Networks,[30] Xilinx and Altera[31].

In addition to its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California[32], MIPS has development facilities in Shanghai, China and Beaverton, Oregon[33]. It also has offices in Hsin-chu, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; Remscheid, Germany and Haifa, Israel.[34]

Contents

Technology

MIPS Technologies’ processor architectures and cores are used in home entertainment[35], networking [36] and communications products. The company licenses its 32- and 64-bit architectures as well as 32-bit cores.[37]

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[38]. MIPS customers license the architecture to develop their own processors or license off-the-shelf cores from MIPS that are based on the architecture. [39]

The MIPS32 cores include the 4K, M14K[38], 24K[40], 34K[41], 74K[42], 1004K[43] (multicore and multithreaded) and the 1074K (superscalar and multithreaded) families.

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[44] and NetLogic Microsystems[45].

SmartCE (Connected Entertainment) is a reference platform that integrates Android, Adobe Flash platform for TV, Skype, the Home Jinni ConnecTV application and other applications.[46][47] SmartCE lets OEM customers create integrated products more quickly.

Operating Systems

MIPS Technologies is predominately used in conjunction with Android and Linux operating systems.[48]

Android: Google’s Android operating system that is processor-agnostic[49], is built on the Linux kernel[50]. MIPS originally ported Android to its architecture for embedded products beyond the mobile handset, where it was originally targeted by Google.[51] In 2010, MIPS and its licensee Sigma Designs announced the world’s first Android set-top boxes[52]. By porting to Android, MIPS processors power smartphones and tablets running on the operating system.[53]

Real-time operating systems that run on MIPS include CMX System, eCosCentric[54], ENEA[55], Express Logic[56], FreeRTOS, Green Hills Software, LynuxWorks, Mentor Graphics, Micrium, QNX Software Systems, Quadros Systems Inc., Segger and Wind River.

Licensees and Products

MIPS Technologies creates the processor architecture that is licensed to chip makers.[57][58] The company has 125+ licensees who ship more than 500 million MIPS-based processors each year.[59]

MIPS Technologies has a strong customer licensee base in home electronics; 75 percent of Blu-ray Disc players are running on MIPS Technologies processors.[60] In the digital home, the company’s processors are predominately found in digital TVs and set-top boxes.[46]

Within the networking segment, licensees include Cavium Networks and Netlogic Microsystems.[36] Cavium has used up to 16 MIPS cores for its OCTEON family network reference designs.[61] Netlogic ships Linux-ready MIPS64-based XLP, XLR, and XLS multicore, multithreaded processors.[62] Licensees using MIPS to build smartphones and tablets include Actions Semiconductor and Ingenic Semiconductor.[63] Tablets based on MIPS include the Cruz tablets from Velocity Micro.[64] TCL Corporation is using MIPS processors for the development of smartphones.[65]

Other licensees include Broadcom, which has developed MIPS-based CPUs for over a decade[66], Microchip Technology, which leverages MIPS processors for its 32-bit PIC32 microcontrollers[67], and Mobileye, whose EyeQ2 and EyeQ3 are based on cores licensed from MIPS.[68]

Company timeline

References

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  69. ^ John Hennessy
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External links