Wave Computer Embraces MIPS To Extend Market

This week machine learning start-up Wave Computing acquired IP licensing company MIPS Tech (formerly MIPS Technologies). Wave Computing is one of the many start ups that are targeting artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) workloads. Initially, Wave has been focused on data center applications, but with the MIPS acquisition, it’s clear that Wave has ambitions to take its technology all the way into IoT edge computing.

This is an acquisition role reversal in that we’ve seen - usually it"s processor companies, like Intel, to buy ML companies, like Nervana and Movidius, not the other way around. The strategic combination of Wave’s AI data-flow architecture with MIPS classic CPU architecture is part of a new computing paradigm.

TIRIAS Research

Wave Computing Chip

The MIPS Legacy and Opportunity 

Long-time industry observers will understand the storied history of MIPS. It was one of the key early RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) architectures that also included Sun’s SPARC and IBM’s RT. MIPS was initially developed as a workstation and server platform at Silicon Graphics (SGI) and later spun off as an intellectual property (IP) company - MIPS Technologies. Initially, MIPS was successful, it became the defacto architecture for high-performance networking start ups (RMI, SiByte/Broadcom, Cavium, etc.) and dominated embedded processing segments such as set- top boxes. It was also the CPU architecture of the Sony PlayStation and PlayStation 2. Additionally, Microchip scaled the MIPS architecture down for microcontrollers. More recently, MIPS is the CPU architecture for the MobileEye ADAS processors (acquired by Intel).

While MIPS dominated the mid-to-high-end IP business, Arm was relegated to the low end. Over time, however, Arm moved up in performance and began to disrupt MIPS in networking and other embedded designs. At the same time, MIPS was also being challenged by the PowerPC in networking and lost the game console business at Sony to IBM’s Cell processor (which was based on PowerPC).

But, the greatest miss for MIPS was mobile devices, including cell phones. While there were attempts to bring a MIPS platform to cell phones and later smartphones, Arm’s head start could not be overcome. Even Intel’s attempts to bring x86 to smartphones went down in flames. In China, a MIPS clone architecture sponsored by the government gained some traction, but it never hit critical mass, and it didn’t significantly contribute to MIPS Technology bottom line.

With attacks coming on all sides, MIPS eventually sold off its patent portfolio to a consortium headed by Arm and sold the operating company to graphics IP provider Imagination Technologies. But things did not go any better under Imagination as that company lost support from its most important client, Apple, and also began to free fall. After the board of directors ousted the Imagination CEO Sir Hossein Yassaie in 2016, the new CEO decided to sell the company to Canyon Bridge in late 2017. At roughly the same time, MIPS was sold to Tallwood Venture Capital. Tallwood also invests in AI start up Wave Computer, which is being run by some former MIPS executives and both companies were chaired by Dado Banatao. As a result, the combination of the two companies was inevitable.