In 2008, MIPS Technologies celebrates its 10th anniversary. The current quarter ending June 30 will mark the completion of MIPS’ 10th year as a public company. A lot has changed in those 10 years. The company’s initial product offerings were exclusively ISA licenses. Now MIPS has five major families of processor cores with robust configuration options for a wide array of markets and applications, as well as four major analog product lines. Add to this a complete portfolio of development tools and software and the broad MIPS Ecosystem, and altogether MIPS Technologies has today some of the industry’s most advanced solutions to help SoC developers lower costs and get to market faster with a high degree of confidence.
As MIPS Technologies celebrates its 10th anniversary, here is a brief look back at the history of the company and some of its major milestones.
MIPS: The Beginning
In 1981, a Stanford University engineering team headed by Dr. John Hennessy—now President of Stanford University—initiated the MIPS RISC architecture project. The team pioneered computer architectures in work on pipeline scheduling for reduced instruction set computer (RISC) processors. Based on this work, in 1984, Dr. Hennessey founded MIPS Computer Systems, Inc.
MIPS Computer Systems supplied chips to Silicon Graphics (SGI), a company founded by Jim Clark, a former Stanford professor and a colleague of Dr. Hennessy. During this time, MIPS introduced the R4000™, the industry’s first 64-bit microprocessor. The R4000 was named “Microprocessor of the Year” by Microprocessor Report in 1991.
In 1992, SGI bought MIPS Computer Systems, and continued MIPS microprocessor development through its internal MIPS Group. The company then incorporated MIPS Technologies, Inc. as a wholly-owned subsidiary of SGI. MIPS’ success continued. In 1996, the MIPS architecture became the highest-volume and fastest-growing RISC architecture in the world, with 19.2 million processors shipped by MIPS licensees. By 1997, MIPS licensees shipped 48 million processors, making MIPS the first RISC architecture to exceed Motorola’s 32-bit 68000 CISC volume.
Elsewhere in the world that same year—1997—three analog inventors, Professor Carlos Leme, Professor João Vital and Professor Jose Franca, came together to discuss the challenges of analog design, IP integration and the future of SoC design. They recognized a great opportunity to create a company that would leverage the growing analog engineering expertise they were creating in Portugal. Their combined insight and vision became Chipidea Microelectronica. No one at MIPS Technologies or Chipidea could have known that a little more than a decade later, Chipidea would become part of MIPS Technologies, creating the world’s only company that provides a combined portfolio of processors, analog IP and software tools for the embedded market.
By 1998, it was clear that there was a market emerging where 32-bit microprocessors could work in the consumer space. As the cost to design and manufacture microprocessors based on the MIPS technology decreased, it was a great time for MIPS to address the consumer market as an IP company. In 1998, MIPS Technologies spun out of SGI and made its initial public offering. And in 1999, the MIPS64 and MIPS32 architecture standards were introduced, incorporating all previous MIPS instruction-set architectures and providing a foundation for all future MIPS processor development. By 2004, MIPS was the number one architecture in the IDTV and DVD recorder markets, and in 2005 achieved 97% market share in the cable modem market.
In 2007, MIPS acquired Chipidea, becoming the world’s second largest provider of semiconductor design IP, and the number one provider of analog and mixed-signal IP in the world. Now, with more than 250 customers around the globe, the company powers some of the world’s most popular products for the digital entertainment, home networking, wireless, and portable media markets.
MIPS Milestones throughout the Years
2008
Unveils the MIPS32® 1004K™ Coherent Processing System: the industry’s first multi-threaded, multiprocessor IP core for the embedded market
Extends digital consumer leadership with industry’s first 65nm HDMI IP solution and announces strategic alliance with NXP Semiconductors for HDMI technology
2007
Announces strategic entry into 32-bit microcontroller market
Acquires Chipidea, the world leader in analog and mixed-signal IP
Unveils the MIPS32 74K™, the industry’s only fully-synthesizable processor cores to achieve >1GHz in a 65nm TSMC process
2006
Introduces new multi-threading MIPS32 34K® core family for high performance, cost-sensitive embedded applications
2005
Acquires First Silicon Solutions (FS2) for state-of-the-art debug tools
Introduces the MIPS32 24KE™ core family, the first to offer the breakthrough performance of the MIPS32 24K® family with DSP enhancements
2004
Introduces the MIPS32 24K family, the industry’s highest-performance, 32-bit synthesizable cores
2003
Introduces new Pro Series® cores to enable SoC designers to supercharge application performance
2002
Acquires leading GNU tool chain vendor Algorithmics for optimized GCC tool chains and Linux kernel porting
Introduces the small, high-performance, low-power MIPS32 M4K® core, designed for SoCs with multiple CPU cores
2001
Introduces enhancements to MIPS32 and MIPS64® architectures (“Release 2”)
Introduces industry’s highest performance, synthesizable, 32-bit cores available for licensing, the MIPS32 4KE® family
1999
Introduces MIPS64 and MIPS32 architecture standards, incorporating all previous MIPS® instruction-set architectures and providing a foundation for all future MIPS processor development
1998
Makes an initial public offering on June 30, 1998
1992
Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI) acquires MIPS Computer Systems and incorporates MIPS Technologies, Inc. (a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI)
1991
R4000™, the first 64-bit microprocessor, named “Microprocessor of the Year” by Microprocessor Report
1984
MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. founded by Dr. John Hennessy
1981
A Stanford University engineering team headed by Dr. John Hennessy initiates the MIPS RISC architecture project
