MIPS Tech LLC, formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. and MIPS Technologies, Inc., is an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture 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 MIPS architecture, a pioneering RISC design. The company generated intense interest in the late 1980s, seeing design wins with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) and Silicon Graphics (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 it 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, best known for its PowerVR graphics processor family. They were sold to Tallwood Venture Capital in 2017 and then purchased less than a year later by Wave Computing. Wave declared bankruptcy in 2020, emerging in 2021 as MIPS and announcing that the MIPS architecture was being abandoned in favor of RISC-V designs. In May 2022, MIPS previewed its first RISC-V CPU IP cores, the eVocore P8700 and I8500 multiprocessors. In December 2022, MIPS announced availability of the P8700. In July 2025, MIPS was acquired by GlobalFoundries.
History
MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984 by a group of researchers from Stanford University including John L. Hennessy and Chris Rowen. These researchers had worked on a project called MIPS (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 first 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 drew the attention of companies such as Cadnetix, Prime Computer and Silicon Graphics (SGI), these adopting the R2000 for new products. SGI, having noted that the Motorola 68000 series of processors was "at the end of its price-performance curve", adopted the MIPS architecture for its computers. 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, Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) released a Unix workstation based on the MIPS design. Following the development of the R2000 and R3000 microprocessors, a change in management was accompanied by a new goal of becoming a computer vendor, but the company found itself unable to compete in the computer market against much larger established companies, and struggled to support the costs of developing both chips and systems (MIPS Magnum).
Acquisition by SGI To assure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64-bit R4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992 for $333 million, and renamed it "MIPS Technologies Inc.", a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.
During SGI's ownership of MIPS, the company introduced the R8000 in 1994 and the R10000 in 1996 and a follow-up the R12000 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 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, raising about $16.3 million with an offering price of $14 a share, with SGI retaining a majority of shares. 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 the remaining MIPS shares it held as a stock dividend to SGI shareholders.
Post-spinoff 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 its fiscal fourth-quarter and that it would lay off another 15% of its workforce. At the time MIPS had 512 employees. In 2010, Sandeep Vij was named CEO of MIPS Technologies. Vij studied under John Hennessy as a Stanford University graduate student. Prior to taking over at MIPS, Vij was an executive at Cavium Networks, Xilinx and Altera. EE Times reported that MIPS had 150 employees as of November 1, 2010. An August 14, 2008, EDN article had reported that MIPS had over 500 employees at the time; if true, then MIPS reduced their total workforce by 70% between 2008 and 2010. In 2012, the company's main R&D center was in Sunnyvale, California, with engineering facilities in Shanghai China; Beaverton, Oregon; and, Bristol and Kings Langley, both in England. It also had offices in Hsinchu, Taiwan; Tokyo, Japan; Remscheid, Germany; and, Haifa, Israel.
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