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MIPS Becomes RISC-V

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Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#31

Post by moistbar »

st_goliath wrote: post #15

I just read the official statement[1] that's linked to in the article. Just so I get this straight: Wave Computing, the company that bought the remains of MIPS, is now (after bancruptcy) spinning it off as a separate company, that is going to work under the name MIPS, holds the rights to the MIPS architecture, but is doing RISC-V? [1] https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wave-computing-and-...

That's what I got from it, but I have to say I don't understand the decision to throw away such a storied architecture as MIPS. I mean come on, the N64 runs on it!

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#32

Post by mikepurvis »

MisterTea wrote: post #26
mortenjorck wrote: post #5

This is more or less analogous to Blackberry moving to Android, isn’t it? Storied, old-guard tech company loses most of its market share, trades in its first-party stack for a rising open-source alternative. Is MIPS still a big enough name to make this much of a coup for RISC-V? Or is this the last-ditch effort of a fallen star of the semi market?

> Is MIPS still a big enough name to make this much of a coup for RISC-V? Or is this the last ditch effort of a fallen star of the semi market? Mips has seemingly been on life support sine the late 90's. I kind of think the SGI buyout and later spin-off doomed them as they were focused on building high performance workstation processors while Arm was busy focusing on low power and embedded systems. Guess who was bett…

It's interesting that that's where they've been focused, because my only exposure to MIPS chips has been in low-cost Mikrotik routerboards, eg:

https://mikrotik.com/product/RB450

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#33

Post by rwmj »

zokier wrote: post #20

The progression of headlines is funny: 1) MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8258092 We are still in the game 2) Linux-running MIPS CPU available for free to universities – full Verilog code https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444567 Okay, we are not doing so great, maybe we can get young kids hooked? 3) MIPS Goes Open Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187…

I have one of the purple MIPS SBCs from back when MIPS was briefly owned by Imagination (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Creator https://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20). Slow as hell even back in 2014. I wonder if one day it'll be a museum piece :-?

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#34

Post by tyingq »

mikepurvis wrote: post #32
MisterTea wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is MIPS still a big enough name to make this much of a coup for RISC-V? Or is this the last ditch effort of a fallen star of the semi market? Mips has seemingly been on life support sine the late 90's. I kind of think the SGI buyout and later spin-off doomed them as they were focused on building high performance workstation processors while Arm was busy focusing on low power and embedded systems. Guess who was bett…

It's interesting that that's where they've been focused, because my only exposure to MIPS chips has been in low-cost Mikrotik routerboards, eg: https://mikrotik.com/product/RB450

I imagine MIPS (via Atheros, Broadcom, etc) was broadly deployed in things like home routers because it was royalty free, power efficient, and already had Linux kernel mainline support. Though probably losing share to ARM now.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#35

Post by monocasa »

rst wrote: post #22
gautamcgoel wrote: post #4

This is huge. It looks like the only architectures widely-deployed in ten years will be x86, ARM, Power, and RISC-V (maybe also SPARC64 in Japan, although that's rare in the US).

Depends where you look. Hard to see IBM's z/Architecture dying out in that timeframe (the latest branding for S/360-derived mainframes), for example, and the embedded space is likely to remain an odd bestiary for quite some time.

Embedded is going to become way less of a bestiary, at least in the five digit gate count RISC space.

ARC, Xtensa, V850, arguably MIPS, etc. all worked in the "we're cheaper to license than ARM, and will let you modify the core more than ARM will" space. I'm not sure how they maintain that value add when compared to lower end RISC-V cores. I expect half of them to fold, and half of them to turn into consulting ships for RISC-V and fabless design in general.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#36

Post by MaxBarraclough »

Everyone's right to celebrate the success of RISC-V, but part of me thinks it's a shame that there's relatively little architectural diversity (edit I should have said ISA diversity) in modern CPUs. MIPS, Alpha, and Super-H, have all but faded away. Power/PowerPC is still out there somewhere though. Apparently they're still working on SPARC, too. [0]

At least we'll always have the PS2. ...until the last one breaks, I guess.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#37

Post by synergy20 »

It could preempt RISC-V long time ago by doing this. I hope it's not too late.

MIPS is still used in routers and set-top-boxes, but the steam is running out quickly, nearly all routers/set-top-box new design are now using ARMs already. There is a last hope though.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#38

Post by theodric »

tyingq wrote: post #34
mikepurvis wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that that's where they've been focused, because my only exposure to MIPS chips has been in low-cost Mikrotik routerboards, eg: https://mikrotik.com/product/RB450

I imagine MIPS (via Atheros, Broadcom, etc) was broadly deployed in things like home routers because it was royalty free, power efficient, and already had Linux kernel mainline support. Though probably losing share to ARM now.

Indeed, Asus moved from MIPS to ARM between the RT-AC66U and RT-AC68U, and the various *pkg repos have since dropped support. MIPS may as well be dead.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#39

Post by ChuckMcM »

rwmj wrote: post #33
zokier wrote: post #20

The progression of headlines is funny: 1) MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8258092 We are still in the game 2) Linux-running MIPS CPU available for free to universities – full Verilog code https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444567 Okay, we are not doing so great, maybe we can get young kids hooked? 3) MIPS Goes Open Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187…

I have one of the purple MIPS SBCs from back when MIPS was briefly owned by Imagination ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Creator https://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20 ). Slow as hell even back in 2014. I wonder if one day it'll be a museum piece :-?

Yes it will. You should preserve it and/or donate it once you no longer want or need it.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#40

Post by Zenst »

rwmj wrote: post #33
zokier wrote: post #20

The progression of headlines is funny: 1) MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8258092 We are still in the game 2) Linux-running MIPS CPU available for free to universities – full Verilog code https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9444567 Okay, we are not doing so great, maybe we can get young kids hooked? 3) MIPS Goes Open Source https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=187…

I have one of the purple MIPS SBCs from back when MIPS was briefly owned by Imagination ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination_Creator https://elinux.org/MIPS_Creator_CI20 ). Slow as hell even back in 2014. I wonder if one day it'll be a museum piece :-?

Not any time soon as can still buy them: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/single-board-computers/125330...
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