New MIPS Architecture Does Virtualization, SIMD

[phoronix]

Phoronix: New MIPS Architecture Does Virtualization, SIMD

MIPS Release 5 was announced today as a new MIPS processor architecture that encompasses MIPS32, MIPS64, and microMIPS instruction set architectures. MIPS "R5" brings in two years of work to deliver new processor features...

http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=MTI0NDU

[Krysto]

This is odd. Is it me or does it sound like they're just now starting to catch-up with many of ARM's features? I would've thought many of those features would already exist on MIPS, considering MIPS has been used for supercomputers and whatnot.

[uid313]

Nice to see that MIPS is still being developed.

Too bad MIPS is a proprietary architecture and not open souce and royalty-free.

[89c51]

Nice to see that MIPS is still being developed.

Too bad MIPS is a proprietary architecture and not open souce and royalty-free.

Don't think it matters much. Well at least until the point someone can make chips in his garage/basement. Free software became that big because the only investment you have to make is personal time. HW on the other hand requires quite a lot of money.

[uid313]

Don't think it matters much. Well at least until the point someone can make chips in his garage/basement. Free software became that big because the only investment you have to make is personal time. HW on the other hand requires quite a lot of money.

Even so, I still would prefer an free and open architecture.

I dream of a computer 100% free open source, not only the operating system, but everything. The motherboard, the CPU, the case, everything. CAD files, schemata, drawings, pinouts, charts, firmware, source code, everything.

[Brane215]

Even so, I still would prefer an free and open architecture.

I dream of a computer 100% free open source, not only the operating system, but everything. The motherboard, the CPU, the case, everything. CAD files, schemata, drawings, pinouts, charts, firmware, source code, everything.

MIPS is open-source. You apy the fee and get the source. I see nothing wrong with commercial part. Good work in fair quantity has to be paid. If you want to see totally royalty-free core, take a look at opencores.org .

I just wish AMD took MIPS instead an ARM route...

[chithanh]

It's good to see that MIPS places some emphasis on their 64 bit parts again.

I just wish AMD took MIPS instead an ARM route...

AMD did sell MIPS-based chips some time ago (Alchemy) but they exited that business.

MIPS is not a free/open source design, also parts of the instruction set are patent encumbered.
An architecture with open source implementations is SPARC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPARC#O...mplementations