MIPS Technologies Inc has licensed its new ‘Ruby’ chip architecture to NEC Corp and Toshiba Corp. The two firms have signed ten year agreements for use of the 64-bit architecture, which is designed to eventually achieve processing of more than a billion instructions per second. The Ruby processor is based on the MIPS V ISA (instruction set architecture) with special 64-bit operations for graphics. It is expected to deliver over 1000 Dhrystone mips using current 0.25 micron process manufacturing technology and run at speeds of up to the 1GHz. The chip is intended for use in set-top boxes and data communications devices. MIPS plans to introduce the Ruby processor by the end of 1999. NEC – which has also extended its current MIPS license by a further ten years – is planning to ship products based around the chip by the end of the year 2000.
