Qualcomm, Oracle, Imagination team up to optimize Java, OpenWRT, Internet of Things for MIPS architecture

Joel Hruska

Qualcomm, Imagination Technologies, Oracle, Ingenic Semiconductor, and a number of other firms announced a new open source collaborative effort centered around improving MIPS support for a variety of platforms and architectures. Dubbed “prpl” and pronounced like the color, this new program is meant to drive MIPS adoption. Many of the participating companies will work on specific projects — Imagination and Oracle will work on bringing an optimized form of Java out for the CPU technology, while Qualcomm will focus on contributing to carrier-grade OpenWRT (the open source networking project).

Prpl’s stated goal is to contribute to both Linux and Android with promises of support for Arch, CentOS, Chromium OS, Debian, Fedora, Gentoo, MEOS (MIPS Embedded OS), Montavista, Redhat, Tizen, Ubuntu, and WebOS (really?), with an open-source “code bank” for a additional resources. The goal is to build a community around MIPS to help offset the tremendous popularity of ARM devices, as well as to create an Internet of Things infrastructure focused on datacenter-to-datacenter applications, software portability, and virtualized architecture.

Ingenic’s new embedded MIPS-based controller

That’s a neat capability on paper, but whether anyone will opt for it in practice is an entirely different question. MIPS has been successful in embedded hardware, but it’s had very little luck pushing out of the embedded space and challenging ARM in smartphones or higher-end devices. The odd exception to this is that MIPS retains some high-profile design wins in the Chinese market — Ingenic Semiconductor, one of the Prpl partners, has developed a MIPS-based architecture, China’s Loongson CPU is MIPS-derived, and multiple supercomputers have used the architecture.

The odds of MIPS winning broad hardware support from the wide market seem limited. Not only has ARM secured itself a dominant position in many of the markets Imagination Technologies would like to enter, IBM and Nvidia have made waves already this year with the OpenPower initiative. It’s hard to see MIPS making much room for itself in that ultra-crowded market. Still, support from Qualcomm and Imagination Technologies’ strong GPU business could improve the core’s usefulness for embedded applications.