MIPS, China's Loongson CPU Are Both Going All-in on RISC-V

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www.extremetech.com, Mar. 15, 2021 – 

RISC-V is having itself a moment. What began as an effort to produce an open-source ISA for low-end microcontrollers and other simple kinds of chips is becoming a genuine ecosystem. RISC-V CPUs still can't challenge the likes of a Cortex-A76 or x86 CPU, but they're creeping up the performance charts. Two recent developments could give the project a further boost: First, MIPS (formerly Wave Computing) has announced it will begin developing its own RISC-V CPUs. Second, China's new Loongson CPU, based on the MIPS64 architecture, may be looking for a new ISA.

Wave Computing was an AI company developing around a MIPS architecture that eventually bought MIPS Technologies itself before collapsing into bankruptcy. In the aftermath, Wave announced it would rebrand as MIPS. Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, MIPS Technologies (not just MIPS) was a RISC CPU developer who found success in the 1980s before being acquired by SGI in the early 1990s. SGI eventually decided to go with the then-upcoming Itanium in lieu of continuing to develop its own in-house CPUs, so MIPS was reborn as a tech licensing company.

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