In fact, MIPS has long been dead, merely maintaining vital signs through an external circulatory system. The external circulatory system of MIPS consists of former MIPS chip design companies, such as Loongson’s desktop and server CPUs and Junzheng’s mid-to-high-end embedded CPUs. They only use the MIPS instruction set, while the CPU cores are entirely independently designed. Besides that, there are still some low-end MCUs and network device chips with certain models available for sale, but the MIPS architecture itself has long been beyond saving.
MIPS probably hates Loongson the most because Loongson nominally uses the MIPS instruction set but has expanded to its own LoongISA and developed an independent software ecosystem based on LoongISA. This software ecosystem is incompatible with other MIPS chips, effectively seizing the ecological dominance of MIPS desktops and servers. Therefore, MIPS sought to take down Loongson together with Xilinx, not expecting that Loongson designed a completely independent LoongArch instruction set, no longer entangled with MIPS. MIPS and Xilinx struck with tremendous force, but MIPS perished first, leaving Xilinx severely injured.
Today, all of Loongson’s CPU products are redesigned based on the LoongArch architecture, breaking free from the constraints of MIPS. The performance of Loongson’s CPUs has skyrocketed, and the software ecosystem is flourishing, all of which has nothing to do with MIPS anymore. Loongson’s desktop CPU 3A6000, based on the LoongArch architecture, matches the performance of the 10th generation Core i3-10100, which also has 4 cores and 8 threads. The desktop software ecosystem on Linux has no significant differences compared to x86, with printer compatibility even exceeding all x86 version Linux. No wonder Xilinx is anxious and fearful, greedily wanting to review Loongson’s CPU design!
Another well-known domestic company designing CPUs based on the MIPS instruction set is Junzheng, but Junzheng is also moving away from MIPS. Junzheng is not directly targeted by MIPS and Xilinx, so its departure from MIPS is more measured. Currently, Junzheng has some products that already use its independently designed RISC-V small cores for real-time processing, and it has developed large cores of the RISC-V instruction set to compete with the ARM53 and ARM55 series. Higher performance cores targeting the mid-to-high-end ARM CPUs are still under development. Junzheng has confirmed that future products will transition from the current MIPS architecture cores to RISC-V cores, and they are progressing according to plan.
The MIPS company has stopped developing new products based on MIPS, and Xilinx has not developed any new products either. Other companies have long ceased developing new products based on the MIPS architecture, and once all devices based on MIPS chips are eliminated, MIPS will completely disappear from the market.
