On Sat, November 10, 2012 2:36 am, Xiaofan Chen wrote: > On Sat, Nov 10, 2012 at 1:21 PM, Manu Abraham > wrote: >> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 10:09 AM, Xiaofan Chen >> wrote: >>> On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Spehro Pefhany >>> wrote: >>>> 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 >> portfolio >> 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 >> improving >> 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, >> but it's >> hard to see IT in that picture, unless they are selling something to >> Microchip ? >> > > 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 > with > 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. The MIPS cores are very well represented in the embedded space (for example, according to Wikipedia, *all* of the venerable Linksys WRT54G routers are MIPS based), Microchip is just the flagship of MIPS in general purpose processors. As I understand it, the core has potential for greater speed, the limit is the lithography behind the technology and what people are willing to pay for. In terms of physical space on the die, the core is actually pretty small... memory dominates- You'll notice that the Raspberry Pi actually uses a separate part for RAM- pushing the cost of manufacture much higher with Chip-on-chip *and* BGA. There is absolutely no indication that the MIPS architecture is going away or will cease development. Regards, Matt Bennett Just outside of Austin, TX 30.51,-97.91 The views I express are my own, not that of my employer, a large multinational corporation that you are familiar with. --=20 http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive View/change your membership options at http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist .