Comprehensive report from Electronic Enthusiasts Network, not long ago, GlobalFoundries announced on its official website that it has reached a final acquisition agreement with MIPS, a leading supplier of artificial intelligence and processor IP. Both companies stated that this strategic acquisition will expand GlobalFoundries’ customizable IP product portfolio, enabling it to further differentiate its process technology through IP and software capabilities.However, wafer foundry itself does not have a direct business linkage with CPU IP core licensing at the chip design level. After briefly praising MIPS’ achievements in the RISC-V field, GF emphasized that MIPS will operate independently. So what strategic considerations does GF have behind this rare acquisition?MIPS has over 40 years of history and a wide range of processor IP libraries, with RISC-V IP being a new major business branch in recent years. Therefore, GF’s acquisition of MIPS is not just a simple expansion of the RISC-V ecosystem, but rather a recognition of its long-accumulated IP advantages and mature silicon validation results.
Reshaping the IP Ecosystem, Highlighting the Importance of Silicon Validation
Silicon Validation is a critical step in the chip design process that occurs post-silicon, aimed at testing actual physical silicon chips to verify whether their functionality, performance, and reliability meet design specifications, while also uncovering issues that were not exposed during the front-end design phase (such as RTL design and simulation verification). It is the final critical checkpoint for chips transitioning from “design blueprints” to “practical products,” directly determining whether chips can be mass-produced and commercialized.Through years of development and accumulation, especially during the silicon validation process, MIPS has gathered rich data and experience with its MIPS IP, enabling GlobalFoundries to provide higher quality and more reliable solutions in its foundry services, further enhancing its competitiveness in the market.Currently, the semiconductor industry is undergoing a profound transformation. Traditionally, Arm only provides IP licensing without self-developing or selling chips, maintaining its role as a neutral player in the ecosystem. However, in recent years, SoftBank and Arm’s executives have discussed transforming into a model similar to Qualcomm’s royalty collection from OEMs, and Arm is also laying out plans to self-develop and sell its own chips, blurring the role boundaries within the ARM ecosystem. Once Arm itself enters the market by designing and promoting complete platform-level chips, it will directly compete with other chip designers using the ARM architecture, and ARM will no longer maintain absolute neutrality.Therefore, if wafer foundries only use ARM architecture for Golden Samples, once Arm and its customers begin to compete, and customers need to switch to other architectures, the singularity of the foundry’s Golden Sample will undoubtedly be a constraint.The so-called Golden Sample refers to an authoritative certified reference chip that functions normally, used for process validation and testing standards. For wafer foundries, a Golden Sample chip is equivalent to a “known good product,” serving as a benchmark in new process development, testing procedure establishment, and equipment calibration.Firstly, during the process validation and mass production testing phases, foundries must conduct probe testing (Wafer Acceptance Test) and chip-level testing (Chip Probing) based on the Golden Sample to determine production yield; without a fully silicon-validated Golden Sample as a reference, testing procedures cannot accurately filter out true bad products, making it difficult to improve yield.Secondly, testing procedures and equipment calibration need to be verified on the Golden Sample chip, for example, debugging DFT test modes such as scan chains, memory BIST, and I/O loopback, all require stable “Golden Sample” circuit behavior as a reference, otherwise, good products may be misjudged as bad products.Thirdly, yield improvement relies on understanding process variations, and the Golden Sample chip provides electrical performance metrics under “ideal conditions,” helping engineers identify and correct defects that deviate from standards.Within the foundry, the Golden Sample chip is the absolute reference for verifying the correctness of equipment and testing strategies. Foundries particularly need to master clearly authorized and fully silicon-validated Golden Sample chips. This means that foundries should obtain IP cores with legal authorization that can be freely produced for trial production, ensuring that the Golden Sample chip is not restricted by intellectual property disputes.For example, if a foundry does not have production permission for ARM cores, it cannot legally produce ARM core Golden Sample chips. If chip design companies using ARM architecture need to switch to other architectures, the foundry needs to prepare Golden Samples for other architectures. For GF, the combination of MIPS’ MIPS and RISC-V architectures has a clear authorization system, enabling GF to expand into new clearly owned Golden Samples, thus supporting the entire process of technology and testing validation. Especially with years of silicon validation, MIPS architecture’s Golden Sample chips are key benchmarks in the foundry’s R&D and mass production phases, affecting process maturity and yield improvement, making them indispensable assets for the foundry.
MIPS’ Low-Key Growth and Market Potential
Although the MIPS architecture has been low-key in recent years, it has been steadily growing. Among them, Broadcom’s design service business has a large-scale application of MIPS architecture, laying a solid foundation for MIPS’ development.As a leading global semiconductor company, Broadcom has a wide product line in various fields such as communications, networking, and storage. Through close cooperation with Broadcom, the MIPS architecture has been applied and validated in many high-performance chips, further enhancing its technical strength and market influence.Additionally, Mobileye has also extensively used the MIPS architecture in chip design, contributing to MIPS’ market share. Against the backdrop of rapid development in automotive intelligence and autonomous driving technology, Mobileye’s chip demand continues to grow, providing MIPS with a broad market space. The automotive industry has high requirements for chip reliability, safety, and performance, and MIPS’ successful applications in this field fully demonstrate the excellent quality and wide applicability of its IP, establishing a good reputation for its global market expansion.At the same time, in the baseband field, MediaTek, Unisoc, and other mobile baseband products have also widely used the MIPS architecture. MediaTek, as a leading global mobile communication chip supplier, has its products widely used in smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices. The successful application of the MIPS architecture in MediaTek’s baseband chips not only brings considerable market share to MIPS but also further consolidates its position in the mobile communication field, enabling it to compete effectively with rivals like ARM.Considering these application scenarios, the global shipment volume of the MIPS architecture is not to be underestimated. For MIPS, its RISC-V architecture is also in a rapid growth phase, attracting many chip design companies and developers due to its advantages of being open-source, flexible, and modular. With both MIPS and RISC-V architectures, MIPS will bring broader business growth space to GlobalFoundries, achieving diversified business growth.For China, the combination of MIPS and RISC-V is also an excellent choice.
The Special Significance in the Context of the Chinese Market
In the Chinese market, MIPS’ IP has a unique operational pattern. Data shows that in December 2018, ChipLink obtained exclusive commercial operating rights for MIPS in China (including Hong Kong and Macau) from Wave Computing and MIPS, covering over 30 MIPS customers, and received permanent, irrevocable exclusive commercial operating authorization for MIPS CPU technology and its related 1400+ intellectual properties in China (global non-exclusive sales rights), including authorization for all underlying instruction set architectures of MIPS CPU, all cores, core sublicensing, modification rights, litigation rights, naming rights, and manufacturing rights.Since then, MIPS has rapidly grown in the Chinese market, with shipments reaching 600 million units in 2024 and expected to exceed 1 billion units in 2025. This achievement is attributed to ChipLink’s active resource integration, strengthening of technology R&D and market promotion after obtaining MIPS’ operational rights in China, promoting the widespread application of MIPS architecture in China.At the same time, the strong support from the Chinese government for the semiconductor industry has provided a favorable policy environment for MIPS’ development in China. Under the guidance of national policies, many domestic enterprises have begun to increase their R&D and application efforts for self-controllable chip technologies. As a mature RISC architecture, MIPS, with its technological advantages and good ecological foundation, has become one of the top choices for many enterprises.In the arbitration ruling regarding the breach of contract case between Loongson and MIPS technology licensing agreement, ChipLink’s status as an authorized party, its charging rights (including penalties), and auditing rights were all supported by the arbitration tribunal, clarifying ChipLink’s sovereignty over MIPS IP in China. This means that Chinese enterprises can achieve true self-control when using this IP for product development, and there is no need to worry about intellectual property risks when exporting products.From the perspective of global CPU IP (excluding x86) licensing shipment volume, MIPS IP ranks second only to ARM, while RISC-V is continuously growing and is expected to surpass MIPS in the future, but not in the short term. ChipLink also possesses both MIPS and RISC-V capabilities, making it an excellent choice for local wafer foundries to complete the IP puzzle.By acquiring MIPS, GF gains a more stable IP supply and stronger technical support. Many emerging local wafer foundries have begun to cooperate deeply with ChipLink, leveraging MIPS IP and its silicon validation capabilities to quickly streamline processes and improve yield, while also rapidly bringing customer products to mass production.
Conclusion
The acquisition of MIPS by GlobalFoundries is not merely a commercial act, but is based on a profound insight into the strategic layout of semiconductor industry IP. This acquisition is expected to enhance GlobalFoundries’ competitiveness in the global semiconductor market and secure a more favorable position in future industry competition, bringing broader development prospects for itself and its partners, while also influencing the evolution of the global semiconductor IP landscape to some extent, promoting the entire semiconductor industry towards a more diversified and innovative direction.At the same time, this acquisition has profound implications for China. In the context of striving for self-control, leveraging mature, self-controllable, and iterative MIPS IP, and relying on both MIPS IP and RISC-V IP, is undoubtedly a more prudent choice.
Disclaimer: This article is a comprehensive report from Electronic Enthusiasts. Please cite the source when reprinting. For group discussions, please add WeChat elecfans999, for submission of interview requests, please email [email protected].
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