Hope for MIPS, From Toshiba

CDWert writes: "EE Times is reporting MIPS is teaming up with Toshiba, to develop their next generation 64 bit proccesor. After all the Itanium Speak and X86-64 talk going on here and the premature predictions of MIPS demise, through their inability to fund the next round I thought this would be refresing to MIPS fans." According to the article though, there will be no product until at least a year from now.

Comments

Broadcom/SiByte

[jlv]

It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the SiByte SB1, which a MIPS64 instruction set SOC with two cores.

Never thought .....

[CDWert]

Well I never thought Id get an article posted, submitted 7 and never one got accepted, ANYWAY as a result, I didnt complete my story, Just figuring what the hell and let the slashdot editors take it and run with it.

One of the coolest parts, I thought it will be a 0.10 micron process, is anyone else using this small of a process yet ?

Is there hope for SGI and MIPS or has SGI decided against it in total ?

Not such a big deal

[Mark of THE CITY]

Read the first two paragraphs of the story. Toshiba is taking MIPS' Amethyst core and developing an embedded controller around it, to be known as TX99. With 600MHz clock, scalable to 1GHz, this is great news for the embedded world and will position MIPS as a competitor to Motorolla for embedded h/w. But it isn't really a new chip for MIPS, just a variation on an existing one.

Also, the purchasers of commodity embedded processors tend to be slow to change, so MIPS/Toshiba will have to make a compelling case to do so.

Embedded...

[Cyclopedian]

This is for the embedded market. Sure, that's all well and good, but somebody tell me the benefits of a 64-bit chip in an embedded device vs a 32-bit chip.

If we're getting by pretty well on 32-bit chips, where's the market for 64-bit chips? High speed routers?
-cyc

Re:Embedded...

[Steveftoth]

maybe not a digital still camera, but definiatly a digital movie camera needs as much CPU as you can throw at it. With a larger processor, you can do more cool stuff on the fly with a camera, from the mundane ( compress harder to save space) to the strange, such as enhanceing the image on the fly ( night vision, color/brightness correction, etc.) Right now some ( if not most) cameras have these kinda of features, but with better processors it can only help to make them better. Also, if you had a CPU instead of an optimized graphics processor you could upgrade your camera.

Re:Embedded...

[Guy Harris]

In fact, code compiled for a 64-bit chip will be slower than the same code compiled for a 32-bit chip, because you get fewer cache lines in your caches, so you have to go back to main memory more often.

The number of cache lines you get in your caches isn't necessarily connected with whether your CPU is a 32-bit or 64-bit CPU; cache lines are typically bigger than the word size of the processor, and not necessarily governed by the word size of the processor.

If you have 64-bit pointers or integers, your variables may take a larger fraction of a cache line, though, so that you get more cache misses and have to go back to memory more often.

You won't necessarily have 64-bit pointers just because your CPU is a 64-bit CPU, and you won't even necessarily have most or all integers be 64-bit. Compilers for 64-bit CPUs may still generate 32-bit code - except when you're processing 64-bit integral data types, in which case it may generate 64-bit code for those data items.

Finding the niche to survive

[Lurks]

MIPs parts scale fairly well as an architecture. You can put a low power single issue one in a smalldevice or make something a bit more grunty by using a dual issue and incorporating FP co-processors and so on. (PS2's EE has such a custom core) They're more suited to this sort of hack-and-slash bespoke CPU design for things which need workstation type levels of computational power than, say, ARM.

ARM's stuff has gained massive ground in the mobile devices and virtually squeezed MIPS (and everyone else) out of that market entirely. The trouble is that MIPS are being squeezed on the upper end of the scale as well by some seriously grunty main CPUs which are starting to adopte the same sort of friendliness to bespoke licensing for incorporation into VLSIs. Such as IBM's PowerPC chips. By way of an example, Sony aren't going with MIPS for the PS3, they're teaming up with IBM.

So where is left for MIPS? Sounds like they're going after SoT type applications which are in need of serious performance, niche that they are. Make something all singing, all dancing with a damn nippy core in there and you hit applications which ARM haven't got the performance for and PPC type chips don't have the power considerations and SoT/integration levels for. Good luck to them.

MIPS is beauty in simplicity.

[Omega]

To anyone who's coded in Assembly, MIPS is pure beauty.

The entire ISA is minimized so as to accomplish most operations in the fewest clock ticks (duh -- it's RISC). But after dealing with the crappy x86 design, it is so refreshing to deal with a logical and straightforward architecture such as MIPS. No messing with ES or DS pointers, just simple, general purpose registers. And don't get me started on the "extended" register size kludge in x86 (EAX -- what the hell?). MIPS doesn't have such baggage.

I've coded for SPARCs, I coded for Motorola's 68k and 68HC processors. But nothing beats MIPS in terms of power from simplicity.

Re:Why will this be any better?

[CDWert]

I understand you confusion.

Your question has to be one of the most confusing Ive ever read, its valid and a good question, the answer is MIPS is far more experienced in RISC architecture than Intel, and second the low cost low power consupion goal from the beggining, they will be using a 0.10 process and any competition is good competition, this processor though is intended for imbedded devices, howd you like a 1ghz risc pda ? Cant really see you squeezing an Itaninum in.

I didnt mean to be terse about your question, It gave me a laugh I had to read it 3 times, kinda like how much wood would a woodchuk chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood....:)

What???

[GauteL]

Itanium will finally get a 64-bit competitor?
</sarcasm>

Seriously, the way some people write about the Itanium, you would think nobody had every created a 64-bits processor before.

Buzzwords

[mrroot]

In addition, the MIPS Alliance Program (MAP) supports the availability of critical hardware and software such as 802.11, Bluetooth, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, audio algorithms, ATM, and others.

Well I think they got all the buzz-word technologies. If they didn't the "and others" should cover it.

ARM

[OverCode@work]

This is just speculation, but I think ARM is putting a lot of pressure on MIPS in the embedded market. The ARM is almost as much of a pleasure to work with as MIPS at the assembly level, and it uses very little power. This is why Intel's StrongARM version of the ARM has found its way into many PDA's and other portable devices.

-John

Re:MIPS for LINUX

[fishebulb]

Dont forget about spim,

Spim homepage

Spim is a MIPS assembly simulator for windows and linux. I am currently using it for a programming class at my University.

Re:1 GHz embedded processors are ridiculous

[Mark of THE CITY]

> So, please tell me where does one need 1 GHz embedded processors?

Embedded systems are getting quite fancy nowadays; it was claimed in "Embedded Systems Programming," January 2002, that cell phones have 10^6 lines of C or C++. They need the horsepower.

For example, it might be more cost-effective to implement signal processing in a fast microcontroller, than to have a DSP chip and a general-purpose microcontroller.

MIPS != new, MIPS != SGI, this != news

[foobar104]

I love reading the comments that say things like, "MIPS will revolutionize the embedded market!" and "Maybe there's hope for SGI yet!"

MIPS microprocessors are everywhere, and have been for years and years. They're in your TV, your cell phone, your microwave oven. They're in those cool little GPS receivers that everybody wants for Christmas. They're in the PlayStation 2, Replay TV PVRs, and most of Cisco's routers.

Look around your office. There are probably half a dozen MIPS processors within about twenty feet of you right now.

This is nothing new or revolutionary, and it has nothing to do with the MIPS R10K, R12K, and R14K processors that SGI uses in their computers. Everybody calm down.