GlobalFoundries to acquire MIPS

[Marees]

Global Foundries to make own brand hardware

GlobalFoundries to make RISC-V CPUs — fab acquires MIPS, will integrate RISC-V and AI IP into its portfolio​

News
By Anton Shilov published 7 hours ago
For an unknown sum.


GlobalFoundries announced on Tuesday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MIPS, a developer of RISC-V-based solutions and IP. The deal will enable GlobalFoundries to offer its own processors and other products based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), which will make the company a rival to some of its foundry clients. Yet, the companies stress that MIPS will operate as a standalone business.

The takeover enhances GlobalFoundries' IP portfolio with MIPS' technologies, including the company's general-purpose CPU IP, AI inference acceleration IP, and various sensors. MIPS recently expanded its processor offerings based on the RISC-V ISA, so its Atlas product line includes a variety of cores suited for both general-purpose and real-time processing, as well as specialized cores designed for AI edge workloads. These cores are designed to enable high performance at a relatively low power consumption for compute-heavy workloads in embedded systems.


Keep in mind, though, that MIPS integration into GF will likely take years, so it is too early to talk about advantages or additional orders.

Following the completion of the transaction, MIPS will continue to function as an independent business unit within GlobalFoundries. It will maintain its existing relationships with other foundries and customers, and support a wide range of technologies across multiple industries.


https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-com...p-into-its-portfolio#xenforo-comments-3882720

 

[Marees]

MIPS has had a chequered decade. Once a pioneer of RISC processors from the work of John Hennessey and Chris Rowen at Stanford University, it competed directly with ARM for many years with the R2000 designed into the original Playstation console. It was bought by Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) in 1992 but spun out in 1998. It was bought by UK IP developer Imagination Technologies, which also supplied graphics technologies into consoles, in 2013, before being sold to Tallwood Ventures in 2017 in a complex deal with Chinese links and then onto Wave Computing in 2018. After Wave went bankrupt in 2020 it emerged again as MIPS with a focus on the RISC-V open instruction architecture also developed by Hennessey.

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/another-risc-v-firm-falls-as-globalfoundries-buys-mips/

 

[Marees]

MIPS has had a chequered decade. Once a pioneer of RISC processors from the work of John Hennessey and Chris Rowen at Stanford University, it competed directly with ARM for many years with the R2000 designed into the original Playstation console. It was bought by Silicon Graphics Inc (SGI) in 1992 but spun out in 1998. It was bought by UK IP developer Imagination Technologies, which also supplied graphics technologies into consoles, in 2013, before being sold to Tallwood Ventures in 2017 in a complex deal with Chinese links and then onto Wave Computing in 2018. After Wave went bankrupt in 2020 it emerged again as MIPS with a focus on the RISC-V open instruction architecture also developed by Hennessey.

https://www.eenewseurope.com/en/another-risc-v-firm-falls-as-globalfoundries-buys-mips/

In its 40-year history, MIPS has come under various owners, so EE Times asked how this time would be any different. He told us that we are at an inflection point in edge AI deployment, and so this is a huge new opportunity for MIPS.

“MIPS has been acquired in the past, that’s right. And when I look at that history, what I see is that MIPS has been acquired when unique technologies or interesting markets have emerged. Graphics were early on, followed by smartphones later. What I see now is some similarity, but also a lot of new things,” Wasson commented. “If you look at the edge AI opportunity that is broader both in terms of impact and in terms of potential customer base than anything MIPS has ever seen in the past, because everything we see around us is going to get more intelligent with time. And I think there lies our biggest opportunity in edge AI. So where GF and MIPS can work together is to go after that opportunity because our technologies are suited for that.”

And then he added, “The other thing I see is that semiconductors are also broadening in terms of where in the globe the interest is coming from. Historically, it has been North America, Japan, China, and Europe, but now we’re seeing more centers of excellence and R&D development centers emerging, which will be broader and more global. The very name is global. I think that helps. I think that allows us to reach those customers.”

“And if we can continue working to reduce the adoption barrier, I think you will see customers emerge in regions that don’t exist today. And I think those regions where you have a large TAM [total addressable market], a broader TAM, not only in volume, but also in breadth, and you have more regions for MIPS. This is a great thing because now we can start leveraging GF scale to start attacking those two options,” he argued.


https://www.eetimes.com/mips-ceo-acquisition-by-globalfoundries-strengthens-edge-ai-opportunity/

 

[1_rick]

IIRC China's "homegrown" Loongson CPUs use an extended MIPS architecture.

 

[Halon]

IIRC China's "homegrown" Loongson CPUs use an extended MIPS architecture.

For a long time they straight up made MIPS chips. Even the 3A4000 was MIPS64LE through and through. Reading about LoongArch sorta makes my head hurt but it’s essentially MIPS with an infusion of RISC-V conventions and forward-looking ideas, and a ton of new vector processing instructions as well as other instructions to reportedly facilitate translation of ARM and x86 intrinsics along with improving virtualization. It’s maximalist and weird, and I wanted to play with one for a while, but $600 for an AliExpress motherboard that offers the performance ballpark of an i3-10100 is kind of a big ask.

MIPS itself is a zombie architecture that lingers as existing designs puttering along in embedded roles. It's entrenched and will linger on in some capacity for ages, but MIPS as a going concern is moribund. The company bearing its name switched to RISC-V as the article indicates, and this presumably helps GloFo to offer something besides increasingly outdated fabrication. Though some things still need that... the new radiation-hardened RISC-V chip will be made on GloFo 12nm.