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RISC Pioneers Impart MIPS® Architecture Creation Story

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – August 5, 2011 – During a panel discussion “Risking It All on RISC” hold at the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, CA, on July 27th several of the MIPS progenitors discussed the creation of the MIPS® architecture and its continued influence on the semiconductor and computing industries: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3paiCK3dlK0

In 1981, Dr. John Hennessy led a Stanford University research team that developed the MIPS architecture, a Reduced Instruction Set Computing (RISC) microprocessor architecture with the potential to dramatically increase performance and reduce costs. Thirty years after the birth of the MIPS architecture, Dr. Hennessy, now president of Stanford University, will join former MIPS colleagues to reflect on the creation and evolution of the powerful architecture, ranging from its leading role in the exploding workstation market of the 1980s to its continued success in a range of markets today.

“We’re delighted to welcome John Hennessy, Bob Miller, Skip Stritter and Joe DiNucci for another of our signature events in semiconductor history,” said John Hollar, president and CEO of the Computer History Museum. “They were the pioneers and risk-takers of the early days of MIPS and RISC, and theirs is a game-changing story. The Museum is proud to capture and present this program as an inspiration for engineers and entrepreneurs to come.” 

“The inherent elegance, performance and efficiency of the MIPS architecture have enabled it to become prolific in the digital home and networking markets, with a growing presence in mobile devices. The MIPS architecture is the industry’s most scalable, powering products that range from low-power 32-bit microcontrollers all the way to ultra high-performance 64-bit networking infrastructure products and supercomputers. This is the beauty of what Dr. Hennessy and his colleagues created with MIPS,” said Sandeep Vij, president and CEO of MIPS Technologies.

About MIPS Technologies, Inc. (www.mips.com)

MIPS Technologies, Inc. (NasdaqGS: MIPS) is a leading provider of industry-standard processor architectures and cores that power some of the world’s most popular products for the home entertainment, communications, networking and portable multimedia markets. These include broadband devices from Linksys, DTVs and digital consumer devices from Sony, DVD recordable devices from Pioneer, digital set-top boxes from Motorola, network routers from Cisco, 32-bit microcontrollers from Microchip Technology and laser printers from Hewlett-Packard. Founded in 1998, MIPS Technologies is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, with offices worldwide.

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