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pmd12345
Dave Patterson's blog (at ARM, no less) showed MIPS power consumption ...
eewiz
"ARM architecture itself contains no lower. It is implementation that leads to ...
China link helps MIPS go mobile
Junko Yoshida
1/4/2011 9:00 AM EST
China connection
So, who is Ingenic Semiconductor?
The company isn’t exactly a household name yet in the U.S. market, but it is said to be gunning for an IPO in China in the first quarter of this year.
Ingenic is known for its XBurst CPU processor, compatible with MIPS II, designed to offer high operating frequency, high-performance multimedia processing, compact die size and low power consumption. Noting that 25 million units of XBurst CPUs have been already designed into embedded devices including Mobile Internet Devices (MID), mobile TVs, GPS, baby monitors, fingerprint identification, etc., Swift described Ingenic “one of the most vibrant Chinese chip companies today.”
Clearly, an Ingenic-designed MIPS-compatible CPU has been shipping in volume for a while -- well before MIPS signed up the Chinese company as a licensee of the MIPS32 architecture. When asked how long MIPS has been working with Ingenic, Swift remained vague, only noting that it involved Swift’s many trips to China in 2010.
This certainly does not mark MIPS’ first foray into China. MIPS announced in 2009 that the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences licensed the MIPS3 and MIPS64 architectures to further development and commercialization of its Loongson family of processors. In 2007, MIPS licensee STMicroelectronics chose the MIPS64 architecture to support ICT's Loongson processor R&D. Two years later, MIPS succeeded in making the first direct license of the MIPS architectures by ICT.
Swift noted that the founder of Ingenic, a computer scientist, studied together with a founder of ICT during their PhD training in China. Asked if MIPS-ICT connection led to MIPS’ licensing agreement with Ingenic, Swift said, “No. This took place independent of that.”
So, who is Ingenic Semiconductor?
The company isn’t exactly a household name yet in the U.S. market, but it is said to be gunning for an IPO in China in the first quarter of this year.
Ingenic is known for its XBurst CPU processor, compatible with MIPS II, designed to offer high operating frequency, high-performance multimedia processing, compact die size and low power consumption. Noting that 25 million units of XBurst CPUs have been already designed into embedded devices including Mobile Internet Devices (MID), mobile TVs, GPS, baby monitors, fingerprint identification, etc., Swift described Ingenic “one of the most vibrant Chinese chip companies today.”
Clearly, an Ingenic-designed MIPS-compatible CPU has been shipping in volume for a while -- well before MIPS signed up the Chinese company as a licensee of the MIPS32 architecture. When asked how long MIPS has been working with Ingenic, Swift remained vague, only noting that it involved Swift’s many trips to China in 2010.
This certainly does not mark MIPS’ first foray into China. MIPS announced in 2009 that the Institute of Computing Technology (ICT) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences licensed the MIPS3 and MIPS64 architectures to further development and commercialization of its Loongson family of processors. In 2007, MIPS licensee STMicroelectronics chose the MIPS64 architecture to support ICT's Loongson processor R&D. Two years later, MIPS succeeded in making the first direct license of the MIPS architectures by ICT.
Swift noted that the founder of Ingenic, a computer scientist, studied together with a founder of ICT during their PhD training in China. Asked if MIPS-ICT connection led to MIPS’ licensing agreement with Ingenic, Swift said, “No. This took place independent of that.”
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Frank Eory
1/4/2011 10:04 AM EST
It's great to see MIPS making inroads in mobile, and particularly in China.
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eewiz
1/4/2011 12:04 PM EST
Interesting to see some competition for ARM in mobile space. But if i am not wrong, their power consumption is higher than that of ARM which is why MIPS is not popular at the first place. So did they come up with a new low power version of the CPU or something which is comparable with ARM?
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luting
1/6/2011 10:13 PM EST
ARM has been claiming their processor as low power. But there is no power magic in their design. ARM architecture itself contains no lower. It is implementation that leads to lower power. So i don't see why MIPS could not do it. Plus, processor power is only small portion of power comparing with LCD display. It will not change story even rival processor has 10 to 20% high power. What is challenging to MIPS is to crack open Ecosystem ARM has been building for past two decades, especially in mobile industry. MIPS sees the chance in Android.
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eewiz
1/7/2011 1:19 AM EST
"ARM architecture itself contains no lower. It is implementation that leads to lower power."
I don't think so. Most of the power savings comes architectural level and not implementation level.For eg, if you look at the AMBA bus spec you will see how on chip bus is optimized for low power using many techniques architecturally. The power savings at implementation level is low and as you said there is no reason why MIPS cant do it.
your observation regarding display pwer is right, but you see the display is not ON all the time. When you say a smart phone has a life of 2 days on one recharge, it mostly depends upon the CPU/components power. Or when you say your ipod can play audio for 40 hours, it is decided by the CPU/codecs. On top you might be aware of low pwr displays like PixelQi/Mirasol which consume only like very less power is available now.
That being said, I agree that the ARM Ecosystem is probably the most important challenge MIPS has to crack.
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elctrnx_lyf
1/4/2011 12:21 PM EST
Another strong foot step by MIPS to come back into the market. ARM has been dominating MIPS for the last few years and MIPS has struggled to come back into the markt in the last one year. As we already know about the MIPS in google TV and now these new smart phone and tablet products with MIPS enabled processors will do wonders for the company. I feel MIPS started looking beyond the Tier1 processor companies like freescale, TI and are able to see the results.
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eewiz
1/4/2011 12:34 PM EST
@Kiran
Do you think the Tier 1 companies will sit idle, If they think it is worth a shot to try MIPS CPUs for the mobile market? Tells me something is not right that MIPS couldn't convince the top companies.
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kinnar
1/4/2011 1:18 PM EST
The Roadmap of MIPS processors is very well planned and it also supports open source os and tools, this helps a lot to adopt a processor for a mid range manufacturers, everyone knows that china has got a very waste community of mid range manufacturers and developers. In this environment MIPS will surely get its place. Then it might also get entered in the top class products.
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Mike Santarini
1/5/2011 12:55 PM EST
Competition good.
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chanj
1/5/2011 5:00 PM EST
Competition will certainly be good to the market. ARM has been really strong in power saving. On the contrary, MIPS is famous in processing power. I am looking forward to learning what the market choose.
This time around, the competition is different from that of x86. Will either of these 2 processors become a replacement of x86 in the near future?
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luting
1/6/2011 10:15 PM EST
What IBM doing sitting on top of another famous CPU architecture, Power Architecture? They should come back to compete in this market.
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pmd12345
4/6/2012 3:13 PM EDT
Dave Patterson's blog (at ARM, no less) showed MIPS power consumption significantly lower than equivalent a7 and a9 implementations.
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