i learnt how cpu work on spim
Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
31–40 of 95 posts
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#32Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
MIPS still has a very large presence in the education sector as well - MIPS asm is very easy to learn because of how consistent it's syntax is and the plethora of open source debuggers as well. Learning MIPS was what originally got me interested in ASM programming since we had a class that was focused on MIPS code and another class that had us build a digital MIPS processor from scratch. The combination of these two…
Yep, I also learned MIPS in my CS class. It's pretty nice to program in.
MIPS is typically seen in computer architecture class because it is simple and regular (at least the original version seen in class). However, for Assembly programming, MIPS, like (almost?) all RISC instructions sets, is tedious. Give me any CISC with a generous range of addressing modes, and I take any day over MIPS/RISC.
We can make a parallel between those low-level ISA and high-level languages: a language like Lisp is lean and simple so it is taught and presented as good design (and people who went through that education keep that in memory), but when it comes to produce real program almost everybody chooses a much less regular language, which is way more practical. (Same could be said for stack-based languages like Forth, which present an extremely simple model to apprehend, but that doesn't mean at all that it is simple to program in.)
Or postfix vs infix for mathematical expressions/calculations. Same principle: the one which is based on a very simple model is praised by aesthetes, but almost everybody prefers the other one, which is simpler to use because it is more natural, despite being based on a more complex model.
In fact, the simplicity of the model is not of much interest for the user, it just makes the life of the implementer easier. But for 1 implementer, there are thousands or millions of users, who want ease of use, not ease of implementation.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#34Please help me remove some of my ignorance: ARM = RISC? Intel = CISC? ? = MIPS? What else is out there in large amounts?
A number of others you might encounter in your embedded devices: 68k, AVR, Z80. (CISC, RISC, CISC, if you’re curious.)
There’s (sadly) not that much 68k left these days, is there? Do you know of any specific companies still using them? (maybe ones that are hiring? :)
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#35I don't think MIPS is going to completely disappear as long as Linux works on it. Someone somewhere in some country
will keep making them as long as the licensing situation is more favorable for whatever use than ARM or x86. If the owning company is going bankrupt that means making MIPS CPUs will be cheaper than ARM or x86.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#36ARM and RISC-V have collectively removed any remaining niches (or future prospects) for MIPS.
Except that there aren't really any practical (affordable!) RISC-V based Linux boards/modules.
The Onion Omega2S is based on a MediaTek MT7688 (MIPS32LE) and since the demise of the CHIP-Pro, is really the only inexpensive surface mount Linux SoM left.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
A number of others you might encounter in your embedded devices: 68k, AVR, Z80. (CISC, RISC, CISC, if you’re curious.)
There’s (sadly) not that much 68k left these days, is there? Do you know of any specific companies still using them? (maybe ones that are hiring? :)
In terms of hardware: NXP ColdFire.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#38Please help me remove some of my ignorance: ARM = RISC? Intel = CISC? ? = MIPS? What else is out there in large amounts?
I assume that all modern CPUs are CISC-ish opcodes running in microcode on a RISC-ish core, and it’s been a few decades since those were useful labels.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#39ARM and RISC-V have collectively removed any remaining niches (or future prospects) for MIPS.
Except that there aren't really any practical (affordable!) RISC-V based Linux boards/modules. The Onion Omega2S is based on a MediaTek MT7688 (MIPS32LE) and since the demise of the CHIP-Pro, is really the only inexpensive surface mount Linux SoM left. https://onion.io/store/omega2s/
That's why I said also "future prospects". It's likely RISC-V will for the very least fill certain niches.
Re: Is MIPS Dead? Lawsuit, Bankruptcy, Maintainers Leaving and More
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
> IIRC, Windows NT was developed on a MIPS machine to ensure that inadvertent x86 dependencies did not sneak into the code. Not MIPS. Windows NT was initially developed on a more obscure RISC architecture, Intel i860. It was later ported to MIPS though.
And ported to DEC Alpha too! It's one of my weirdly favorite ports of NT just because of how little use I believe it ever actually got.
The Alpha port made it through to early release candidates of Windows 2000, and somebody is using it, because there were PuTTY builds for it.