Architectures
Microprocessor developers who want maximum flexibility from processor IP have a solution in the industry-standard MIPS® architecture, the only architecture IP available for licensing as standard product.Developed more than 20 years ago at Stanford University, the MIPS architecture is a simple, streamlined, highly scalable RISC architecture. Its fundamental characteristics - such as the large number of registers, the number and the character of the instructions, and the visible pipeline delay slots - enable the MIPS architecture to deliver the highest performance per square millimeter and lowest energy consumption in today's SoC designs. MIPS architecture products include:
- The MIPS32® and MIPS64® instruction-set architectures, which are seamlessly compatible, allow customers to port from one generation to the next while preserving their investment in existing software
- Application-specific extensions (ASEs) that boost the performance of specific types of applications. They include:
- MIPS® DSP ASE signal processing extension to the industry-standard MIPS32® and MIPS64® architectures, which boosts media performance in consumer SoCs
- MIPS® MT ASE multithreading extension to the industry-standard MIPS32® and MIPS64® architectures, which boosts system performance
- SmartMIPS® ASE, which enables unprecedented security in smart cards and other secure data applications
- MIPS16e™ code compression ASE, which reduces memory requirements by as much as 40 percent
- MIPS-3D® ASE, a cost-effective solution for achieving high-performance 3D geometry processing in digital entertainment and multimedia products
