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MIPS Becomes RISC-V

eejournal.com

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Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#111

Post by gnufx »

slezyr wrote: post #88
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?

Check your router's CPU. I own 4 routers and all of them use MIPS. RISC-V is more like Graphene, it's yet to leave the lab.

Ho, ho. Graphene has left the lab, but it's only got as far as the hype mill, not the factory. https://www.manchester.ac.uk/discover/news/the-university-un... was a notable success though; and allegedly graphene-powered trainers there on a different date.

In contrast, with RISC-V you can put your hand in your pocket for early models, can't you?

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#112

Post by Macha »

dang wrote: post #63
throwaway81523 wrote: post #54

Actual source: https://www.eejournal.com/article/wait-what-mips-becomes-ris...

Right. We changed the URL from https://tuxphones.com/mips-joins-risc-v-open-hardware-standa... , which points to that. Thanks!

May have been a mistake, HN has killed the original source.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#113

Post by hamburglar »

musicale wrote: post #91

There's a lot to like about MIPS. It's a perfectly usable RISC architecture that: - is easy to implement - is supported by Debian, gcc, etc.. - is virtualizable - scales from embedded systems (e.g. compressed MIPS16 ISA) up to huge shared-memory multiprocessor systems with hundreds of CPUs Like RISC-V, MIPS traces its lineage to the dawn of the RISC revolution in the 1980s, though on the Hennessy/Stanford side rather…

- the NOP instruction is 0x0

:)

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#114

Post by cptskippy »

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 :-?

Probably shortly after the Z80s I pulled out of a PBX back in 2000 thinking they'd be hard to come by and worth something some day.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#115

Post by zokier »

Koshkin wrote: post #105
rwmj wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :-?

Microchip PIC32 seems to be plenty fast.

Compared to what?

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#116

Post by esturk »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #41

It was unclear if "v8" of the MIPS architecture is a re-branded RISC-V or if v8 MIPS is a combined RISC-V + MIPS or what.

"In this context, the “8th generation” refers to seven generations of the traditional MIPS architecture, followed by an upcoming RISC-V design. It sounds like the company is implying that this is a smooth transition with some level of compatibility between the old and the new. It isn’t. It’s a clean break as the company switches from the old CPU design, that it owned, to a new one that’s in the public domain."

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#117

Post by cptskippy »

slezyr wrote: post #88
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?

Check your router's CPU. I own 4 routers and all of them use MIPS. RISC-V is more like Graphene, it's yet to leave the lab.

> it's yet to leave the lab.

You can buy them on Amazon.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08W2J9B8J

https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/?qs=pUKx8fyJudB1sOWbbEn...

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#118

Post by Keyframe »

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

Powered all SGI workstations up to the end (excluding Windows NT adventure SGI had), and powered both Nintendo 64 and Playstation (1). MIPS was quite hot back then.

Re: MIPS Becomes RISC-V

#120

Post by rjsw »

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.

Think they are used for the network offload engine in some ethernet adaptors too.
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