MIPS, once a pioneering name in RISC computing and a longtime competitor to Arm, has found itself under new ownership—again. This time, the buyer is GlobalFoundries, the chip manufacturing giant originally spun off from AMD. It’s an ironic twist in the decades-long saga of a company that helped shape early computing architecture—and is now looking for yet another fresh start.
A Legacy That Predates Modern Tech Benchmarks
Long before anyone was debating the best GPU or the top laptop for video editing, MIPS was helping define what computing could be.
Founded in 1986, MIPS introduced the R2000, the first commercial CPU based on the MIPS instruction set—and one of the earliest RISC architectures available under a licensing model.
Led by John Hennessy, a Stanford professor and co-creator of the architecture, the company offered an alternative to the dominant CISC chips from Intel and Motorola.
With a modest 110,000 transistors and a clock speed of up to 15MHz, the R2000 was compact and efficient for its time.
MIPS followed it up with the R3000, which went on to power everything from Silicon Graphics workstations to the original Sony PlayStation, and even guided NASA’s New Horizons probe on its mission through Pluto and into the Kuiper Belt.
MIPS: A Company in Constant Flux
Despite never reaching mainstream dominance, MIPS carved out a niche in performance-critical and embedded systems. Over the years, however, the company’s ownership changed repeatedly:
- Acquired by Silicon Graphics in the ‘90s
- Sold to Imagination Technologies
- Passed to Tallwood Ventures and later Wave Computing
- Reemerged from bankruptcy in 2020 with a pivot to RISC-V
That pivot led to the launch of the eVocore series and the Atlas Explorer platform, but neither made a major splash in the increasingly competitive RISC-V landscape.
Now, with GlobalFoundries stepping in, MIPS is poised to enter yet another phase of its long and winding journey.
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A New Focus: AI, Autonomous Systems, and the Industrial Edge
According to GlobalFoundries, MIPS will operate as a standalone business unit going forward. The focus? AI workloads, autonomous mobility, and industrial edge computing.
“MIPS brings a strong heritage of delivering efficient, scalable compute IP tailored for performance-critical applications,”
— Niels Anderskouv, COO, GlobalFoundries
MIPS CEO Sameer Wasson echoed the sentiment, calling the acquisition “the start of a bold new chapter” for the company.
But while the announcement has generated interest, skepticism remains. The RISC-V ecosystem has struggled with fragmentation and uncertain market adoption. Many will be watching closely to see whether this move will finally bring stability and momentum to a company whose legacy still echoes through modern computing—even if its future remains uncertain.
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