MIPS Technologies is ceasing development of the MIPS architecture and is shifting its focus to creating systems based on the RISC-V architecture. The eighth generation of the MIPS architecture will be built on the advancements of the open RISC-V project.
In 2017, MIPS Technologies came under the control of the startup Wave Computing, which produces accelerators for machine learning systems using MIPS processors. Last year, Wave Computing began bankruptcy proceedings, but a week ago, with the involvement of the venture capital fund Tallwood, it emerged from bankruptcy, restructured, and rebirthed under the new name — MIPS. The new MIPS company has completely changed its business model and will not be limited to processors.
Previously, MIPS Technologies focused on developing the architecture and licensing intellectual property related to MIPS processors, without engaging in direct manufacturing. The new company will produce chips, but based on the RISC-V architecture. MIPS and RISC-V are conceptually and philosophically similar, but RISC-V is developed by the non-profit organization RISC-V International with community involvement. MIPS has decided not to continue the development of its own architecture and to participate in collaborative efforts. Notably, MIPS Technologies has long been a member of RISC-V International, and the technical director of RISC-V International is a former employee of MIPS Technologies.
It is worth noting that RISC-V provides an open and flexible instruction set architecture, allowing the creation of microprocessors for a wide range of applications without requiring royalties or imposing usage restrictions. RISC-V enables the creation of completely open SoCs and processors. Currently, numerous variants of microprocessor cores, SoCs, and already manufactured chips are being developed based on the RISC-V specification by various companies and communities under different open licenses (BSD, MIT, Apache 2.0). Support for RISC-V is present starting from Glibc 2.27, binutils 2.30, gcc 7, and Linux kernel 4.15 releases.
Source: opennet.ru
