MIPS Technologies, formerly MIPS Computer Systems, is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture, a series of pioneering RISC CPUs.

MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984 by a group of researchers from Stanford University as a vendor of microprocessor chips.

After being successful in the chip market with the R2000 and R3000 devices, a management change brought along the larger dreams of being a computer vendor. The company found itself unable to compete in the computer market against much larger companies and was struggling to support the costs of developing both the chips and the systems. In order to secure the supply of future generations of MIPS microprocessors (the 64bit R4000), SGI acquired the company in 1992 and ran it as MIPS Technologies Inc. (MTI), a wholly owned subsidiary of SGI.

When SGI decided to migrate to the Itanium architecture in the mid-1990s, it was decided to spin out MTI as a vendor of embedded microprocessors. MTI made an initial public offering on June 30, 1998, i.e. it was no longer wholely owned by SGI since the IPO. SGI spun it off completely on June 20, 2000 by distributing all its interest as stock dividend to the stock holders.

Shares of the company are publicly traded on Nasdaq with the symbols MIPS.

External links

• MIPS Technologies website
• Silicon Valley InfoZone - MIPS Technologies