I worked at a company that designed whole systems from chips on up. I thought it was odd that they chose MIPS as a base architecture, until someone explained th

I worked at a company that designed whole systems from chips on up. I thought it was odd that they chose MIPS as a base architecture, until someone explained that the alternatives all had far higher licensing costs. IP licensing for other parts of the chip was already their second biggest cost after payroll, so I guess that made sense.