On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Manu Abraham wrot= e: > On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Xiaofan Chen wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Spehro Pefhany wro= te: >>> I suspect that MIPS will not disappear any time soon, but it might be >>> squeezed into narrower or slower-growing niches, and might not develop >>> as rich an ecosystem. ARM Holdings is almost 10x the >>> size of MIPS, and is profitable. >> >> That is why I think Microchip made a mistake to commit on MIPS >> core for the MCU market. Imagination will not be that interested >> in the MCU space as the older MIPS. > > Would this make any difference at all ? ARM has bought MIPS's patent port= folio > and Imagination Technologies took over it's fabs. It could be possible > that IT is not at all interested in the MIPS processor fab, but instead i= mproving > their own graphics core engine with a multitude of stream processors/tile= processors. > But still Microchip does it's own fabrication based on the original MIPS = core > design based on the MIPS architecture. Maybe there exists a royalty ? for= the > architecture and Microchip has to pay royalties to the patent holders, bu= t it's > hard to see IT in that picture, unless they are selling something to Micr= ochip ? > The thing matters is the roadmap, I can see that Imagination/MIPS will have= no much interests in the MCU space in the future. So Microchip is fine now wit= h the M4K/M14K core to compete with Arm Cortex M0/M3 but may not have competitive core to compete with Cortex M4 core and future Cotex Mx core. --=20 Xiaofan --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .