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MIPS Strikes Back: 64-bit Warrior I6400 Arrives
- rayiner 12y ago> When Imagination Technologies acquired MIPS Technologies in 2012 for $100 million Pretty depressing that a pioneering company like MIPS was sold for such a relatively small sum.
- dman 12y agoSGI sold for $25 million. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/once-mighty-sgi-sold-to-rackable-for-25-million/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0 http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/04/01/once-mighty-sgi-sol...
- shaurz 12y agoThe original offer was $40M, which only went up because CEVA big up the price.
- jessaustin 12y agoThe engineers at MIPS were probably happy, since it meant that management might potentially commit to innovation again.
- higherpurpose 12y agoStrange. He talked about that fact that MIPS has been lacking compatibility for Java apps on Android...but completely disregarded the fact that Android L will compile apps natively on MIPS, just like on ARM.
- unwind 12y agoFrom the second page of the article: Android applications are either written in Java, then compiled on the device to the specific required ISA before running (a processes called JIT compilation), or written in the Android Native Development Kit (NDK) to target a specific ISA. Apps written in Java can therefore run on any ISA that Android itself supports, including MIPS. I think it was explained pretty well, actually.
- Sanddancer 12y agoHe's talking about something different. While dalvik's going away and apps will soon be compiled with native code, Android apps can already bundle native code in with the app through Java's Native Interface API. Such code is architecture specific, and usually only available for devices running under ARM, with occasional support for x86 processors. Additionally, some native code would only be available for specific architectures; Firefox mobile won't run on older phones because it requires an FPU, which wasn't guaranteed until ARMv7.
- alexvoica 12y agoFor legacy, native non-MIPS code, we rely on binary translation.
- rodgerd 12y agoGiven I'd expect most JNI code on Android devices are supporting games, I doubt emulation is going to be a big winner.
- ris 12y ago"it requires an FPU, which wasn't guaranteed until ARMv7" That was true until ARM went and broke this rule with the Cortex A5 (which can optionally have the FPU removed)
- Narishma 12y agoIt's the native apps (mostly games) that aren't compatible with non-ARM CPUs, not the Java ones.
- rwmj 12y agoWill Imagination actually publish specs so that Linux is able to implement anything without reverse engineering? The history of binary blobs on PowerVR is not encouraging.
- raverbashing 12y agoThe kernel has a lot of MIPS generic stuff, but of course, they may be slow to integrate somethings in the main kernel or not bother at all This might eventually bite them back. Especially in supporting Android
- ris 12y agoI don't imagine* things would ever be as bad as "linux not being able to run", but Imagination are indeed going to have to seriously rethink their hacker-friendliness if they want to get anywhere in this market. * pun acknowledged
- angersock 12y agoWhat's kind of neat is that you can put a downright silly amount of MIPS cores on something. Octeon, for example, with like 48 cores: http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON_MIPS64.html http://www.cavium.com/OCTEON_MIPS64.html
- wmf 12y agoThat's not specific to MIPS, though.
- shaurz 12y agoThe also have an ARM version: http://www.cavium.com/ThunderX_ARM_Processors.html http://www.cavium.com/ThunderX_ARM_Processors.html
- listic 12y agoWhy isn't anyone making servers with them?
- wmf 12y agoThunder isn't released yet. Cavium may also have trouble building a server ecosystem given their culture of total secrecy.
- justincormack 12y agoeg the quoted IO performance requiring a proprietary IP stack...
- Sanddancer 12y agoCavium's products have traditionally been geared more towards high end routers. Their chips have traditionally had massive amounts of networking bandwidth, but very little I/O for things like storage, or even RAM. Their ARM stuff looks like they may be about to change that, but details there are still rather scant.
- kps 12y ago
- solarexplorer 12y agoFrom the article: "Keep in mind that these processors use different instruction sets (ISAs) so DMIPS are not directly comparable." But DMIPS doesn't refer to million instructions per second, but to the relative performance for a standard benchmark relative to a VAX 11/780 (which is considered to run at 1 MIPS). So any differences in instruction sets are already accounted for. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhrystone http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dhrystone
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoYou're assuming that that benchmark reflects real-world performance, but that assumption is not necessarily correct, especially given the age of the benchmark - I would be very surprised if the most commonly used instructions / etc have not shifted since 1988. Also, the page you linked has a number of other concerns about said benchmark.
- solarexplorer 12y agoWe are in violent agreement here. My point was just to note that the author apparently did not understand the difference between Dhrystone MIPS and "real" MIPS. He probably also did not understand that Dhrystone is an ancient benchmark that should not be used anymore. But that's what you get when don't do your own benchmarks but copy/paste numbers from marketing material...
- alexvoica 12y agoYes, I think that he might not be familiar with how DMIPS works (or what it is).
- fulafel 12y agoAmusing headline considering MIPS chips (R4000 etc) were the first 64-bit CPUs outside supercomputers in the early 90s.
- discardorama 12y agoI thought it was the DEC Alpha which was the first commercial 64-bit CPU?
- fulafel 12y agoNope. MIPS was 91, Alpha 92. See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/64_bit#64-bit_processor_timeline https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/64_bit#64-bit_processor_time...
- kps 12y agoThere were 64-bit CPUs long before there were 64-bit microprocessors. I don't know what the first was, but the IBM 7030 was a 64-bit machine in 1961. (My first computing job, as a co-op, involved testing a UNIX emulation environment for the 64-bit Control Data 180 series, in 1985.)
- fulafel 12y agoWell, Alpha and MIPS (and some supers before them) had 64 bit addressing to handle more than 4 GB of address space. The 7030 had just a handful of memory and no vm, through it did have a 64 bit word size. ARM and x86 have been able to handle 64 bit numbers without anyone claiming they're 64 bit.
- ChuckMcM 12y agoI think it is an interesting strategy, creating what is essentially an alternative to ARM/Mali as a single license SKU. There are rumors floating around that this chip is in a soon to be unveiled Chromebook. I take those with a large grain of salt since every hardware vendor seems to say "This is in the next gen (Google/Apple) device!" Would love to see additional competition here, but Imagination has not been very forthcoming in the past on specs, so maybe Surface material rather than Android/Linux material.
- GrinningFool 12y agoImagination’s executives have also stated they are prepared to offer aggressive IP bundling discounts My mind boggles at attempting to enumerate the number of issues implicit in that simple statement.
- xradionut 12y agoMIPS hasn't gone anywhere. You can get PIC32 chips and boards based on them for various projects include the Open Source TenTec 506 Rebel radio. While there's more tools and chips for ARM on small systems, I still prefer MIPS due to lower complexity/insanity of the tool chain. It's hard to get any of the large system boards and multiprocessor chips without being an OEM.
- alexvoica 12y agoI don't know if you saw this MIPS-based dev board being announced http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-developers/new-mips-creator-ci20-development-board-for-linux-and-android-debuts http://blog.imgtec.com/powervr-developers/new-mips-creator-c...
- xradionut 12y agoIt's currently unobtainium, it can't be purchased.