Early last year, there was talk that MIPS Computer Systems Inc wanted Toshiba Corp to fabricate R-series RISC chips for MIPS to sell under its own name (CI No 1,364), and later it emerged that Toshiba was an architecture licensee to the general R-series design. Now all the talk has come to fruition with an announcement from Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc that Toshiba Corp’s Semiconductor Group has entered into a licensing agreement with MIPS under which Toshiba becomes a MIPS Semiconductor Partner, obtaining the right to design, develop, manufacture and market MIPS’ R-series, including the R3000 and R4000. The move is despite Toshiba’s favouring of the Sparc in workstation products up to now, and of the fact that there is already one Japanese licensee in the shape of NEC Corp. Toshiba plans to bring its own devices to the world market in early spring 1992. Toshiba will also develop and diversify product lines to include its own designs of devices based on the R3000 and R4000 architectures, and offer chip sets integrating peripheral components around the cores of the two parts.
