MIPS Technologies has said it will put its processor architecture in tablets and smartphones as it prepares to duel rivals Arm and Intel in those fast-growing markets. In September, MIPS released the MIPS32 1074K family of application processors, which it hopes to push into mobile devices. The 1074K is scalable up to 1.5GHz and is capable of multithreading, which the company claims will give it a leg up on Arm processors.
I always liked MIPS, but I loved my little (haha, it was huge) IRIX box from SGI. mmmm fond memories…
Hardware and software designed well… I had a SGI Octane many years ago, loved it.
If MIPS could decide to offer quality hardware with good performance to build professional workstations, that would be an excellent move, but I fear this will not come true as those are a niche market, and therefore not very interesting. On the other hand, catering the mobile market could give MIPS a boost to get into “big business” again. Luckily, the mobile market is often about efficiency (good performance, few energy consumption), and there’s still something to improve.
Competing with x86 on high performance workstation market? That would be absolutely insane.
That market used to be MIPS and SPARC… until they sat on laurels and pricing.
If they do what they should have, I can see some very powerful machines scaling far beyond what the x86 processors can do.
It would be a lot of work, but effectively MIPS and MIPS-EL would be awesome for Hi-Perf Workstations (and servers)
That whole “x86 doesn’t scale” rumor has been disproved so many times…
The Intel architecture has borrowed extensively. Apart from impressive manufacturing prowess, Intel was by far the laggards of microprocessor innovation from the ’80s onwards.
Alpha, MIPS, SPARC, Power were ISAs with true innovations.
The x86’s greatest contribution, apart from being the very first microprocessor? Assembly programming that gives you a cerebral hemorrhage.
Well, I’m sure someone invented that before them too… My courses on Motorola 6809 didn’t leave me full of fond memories either.
From what I’ve heard from colleagues who are computer engineers, MIPS is probably the most sanely-designed modern microprocessor.
I believe it was (is?) the teaching standard for undergrads.
You forgot about all those 500 dollar laptops, 400 dollar PCs, Windows, Linux, and all the other goodness that came from having an open architecture based on relatively inexpensive chips and economies of scale.
While the Risc boys were busy selling 10000 dollar workstations that ran an equally expensive OS, x86 was busy underpricing them, stealing their clothes and eating their lunch.
No, x86 hasn’t contributed nothing to the world…
There are much more open architectures than x86. Some rather advanced ones are completely open.
The price advantage of x86 is largely due to Chipzilla’s manufacturing prowess AND the competition from AMD.
Not to mention, the only reason why AMD even is permitted to make x86 chips goes back to IBM requiring a secondary source of x86 silicon – so they FORCED Intel to have a competitor.
Also, while Intel clearly holds the current absolute x86 performance crown, it was AMD who adapted technologies from the DEC Alpha to the Intel platform. And it was AMD who extended the 32-bit x86 ISA to the current x86-64.
Most, if not all, of the “innovations” of Nehalem had already been brought to x86 by AMD.
I’m glad to hear that MIPS is going to compete against ARM and Intel, but it’s disappointing to hear that they’re only targeting tablets and smartphones. When are we going to see those much ballyhooed ARM-based netbooks? Or MIPS-based netbooks? Intel just owns that market, and nobody else has even attempted to compete.
The Chinese Loongson-based netbooks are MIPS compatibles.
Apple destroyed the smartbook before it was even born. It was delayed two years waiting for Adobe to port Flash, and then the iPad came out and the manufacturers (lacking an ounce of imagination) immediately switched to tablets to ride the hype.
If they had just ruddy released something in 2008 instead of waiting, Intel/Atom would be hurting now instead of the Win 7 dominance on netbooks.
Actually, no.
“It can’t play YouTube!”
And it’s dead in the water.
Maybe running gnash or swfdec, but those aren’t very good.
But Youtube has been allowing direct access to the h264/WebM video content for some time now… In fact since Apple rolled out some popular devices with a non-flash policy.
But, not on all videos through the browser – their ad platform can’t deliver ads to an HTML5 video.
I wonder how much it would cost them to simply embed ads directly in the video file. After all, youtube automatically converts sent videos to other formats, so they can taint them in the way…
OTOH, that’s not good news. It means that one couldn’t hide those silly banners anymore.
Edited 2010-11-02 12:40 UTC
Toshiba released AC100 in 2q 2010. Software is not yet ready. Android has terrible user experience on it. And it doesn’t play flash =)
But that’s Android, which isn’t meant for a notebook. They could have used Debian instead.
Or Chrome OS.
… but I am not sure we want it to come from MIPS.
Please read Jonah Probells story about MIPS, their lawyers, and the general lack of innovation outside the legal department:
http://jonahprobell.com/lexra.html
Edited 2010-11-02 09:37 UTC
yuk. mips can stand on its own merits…but killing their own platform over stupidity…
Edited 2010-11-02 12:50 UTC
Thank you for posting this link, fatjoe. Even though the technical details are somewhat beyond my level, I get the drift. Very sad – American companies are nuking themselves with their idiotic lawsuits. The ultimate winners will likely be in Asia as the American companies sue each other into oblivion.
The USA tries hard to export its so-called “intellectual property laws” via free trade agreements. Let us just hope that the rest of the world successfully resists. Even if the USA turns its own economy into a smoking ruin, at least the possibility remains that other countries will continue to advance technology.
I look forward to buying a MIPS-based netbook. I don’t doubt that it will have to be made in Taiwan or China.
Edited 2010-11-02 22:08 UTC
http://www.osnews.com/story/21530
Here’s to you, MIPS!
I’ll boot up my O2+ in your honor.
Has anybody compared power consumption betwen ARM and MIPS? How do the compare?