News & Analysis
Altera licenses 32-bit architecture from MIPS
Dylan McGrath
10/6/2009 10:34 AM EDT
The deal marks the entry of the MIPS architecture into the FPGA realm.
In a statement, Vince Hu, Altera's vice president of product and corporate marketing, said the firm's decision to license the MIPS32 architecture would allow Altera (San Jose, Calif) to provide more options for FPGA customers targeting networking, communications and multimedia applications.
"This license has the potential to broaden MIPS' user base, expand our already broad ecosystem and further proliferate the MIPS architecture," said Art Swift, vice president of marketing at MIPS (Sunnyvale, Calif.).
Joseph Byrne, senior analyst for The Linley Group, said MIPS' technology is an industry standard for ASICs used in consumer multimedia, networking and communications. The deal with Altera means "great potential for much more widespread adoption," Byrne said.
MIPS rival ARM Holdings plc offers a number of processors specifically optimized for FPGAs from major vendors, including Altera, Xilinx Inc. and Actel Corp.
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garydpdx
10/6/2009 5:34 PM EDT
QuickLogic also features a MIPS processor, is it also based on MIPS32?
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garydpdx
10/7/2009 2:41 PM EDT
One thing not clear in this article (on purpose from info provided by Altera?) is whether the MIPS32 core would be resident on the FPGA device (a la PPC on Xilinx Virtex-5) or a synthesizable core from an Altera library.
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