MIPS (Computer architecture)

MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA): A-1 : 19  developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States. There are multiple versions of MIPS, including MIPS I, II, III, IV, and V, as well as five releases of MIPS32/64 (for 32- and 64-bit implementations, respectively). The early MIPS architectures were 32-bit; 64-bit versions were developed later. As of April 2017, the current version of MIPS is MIPS32/64 Release 6. MIPS32/64 primarily differs from MIPS I–V by defining the privileged kernel mode System Control Coprocessor in addition to the user mode architecture. The MIPS architecture has several optional extensions: MIPS-3D, a simple set of floating-point SIMD instructions dedicated to 3D computer graphics; MDMX (MaDMaX), a more extensive integer SIMD instruction set using 64-bit floating-point registers; MIPS16e, which adds compression to the instruction stream to reduce the memory programs require; and MIPS MT, which adds multithreading capability. Computer architecture courses in universities and technical schools often study the MIPS architecture. The architecture greatly influenced later RISC architectures such as Alpha. In March 2021, MIPS announced that the development of the MIPS architecture had ended as the company is making the transition to RISC-V.