MIPS Products

MIPS16e™

The MIPS16eTM ASE (Application Specific Extension) is an optional extension to both the MIPS32® and MIPS64®architectures.

The MIPS16e ASE enables embedded system designers to reduce costs by decreasing the size of memory required to run their application by up to 40 percent compared to traditional 32-bit software implementations. In addition to providing advanced code density, the MIPS16e ASE also achieves a high level of power efficiency, and performance equivalent to that of 32-bit only implementations. The MIPS16e ASE also improves instruction cache hit rate. It is supported by hardware and software development tools from MIPS Technologies and other providers.

The MIPS16e ASE includes the following features:

  • Compatibility with MIPS32 and MIPS64® instruction sets
  • Fixed-size 16-bit instructions
  • Special instructions to further increase code density
  • Coexistence between MIPS16e instructions and existing MIPS binaries
  • Ability to switch between MIPS16e mode and MIPS 32-bit mode
  • Support for 8-, 16-, 32- and 64-bit data types
  • Direct access to 8 of the 32 general purpose registers available in 32-bit mode