> MIPS was pretty popular among early Shenzhen tablets.
> Then they just disappeared. Either MIPS screwed up or ARM did something really smart. My money is on the former...
MIPS SoCs simply fell too much behind. They kept presence in the STB, and router boxes for some time, but even there they lost due to overall "deadness" of the entire ecosystem:
Want latest compiler work, and mainline GCC support? Go for ARM
Want to not to have to support your own Linux fork? Go for ARM
Want more IP coming from a single vendor that just core, interrupt, controller, and DMA? Go for ARM
Want to work with an IP vendor whose sales are not part time lawyers? Go for ARM
When MIPS understood that they are losing, they simply gave up on competing, and improving.
And in the end, the lunch went to MediaTek because it was the only SoC vendor that was ready to ship competitive SoCs with 4G baseband without rapacious licensing deals like Qualcomm do.
> Then they just disappeared. Either MIPS screwed up or ARM did something really smart. My money is on the former...
MIPS SoCs simply fell too much behind. They kept presence in the STB, and router boxes for some time, but even there they lost due to overall "deadness" of the entire ecosystem:
Want latest compiler work, and mainline GCC support? Go for ARM
Want to not to have to support your own Linux fork? Go for ARM
Want more IP coming from a single vendor that just core, interrupt, controller, and DMA? Go for ARM
Want to work with an IP vendor whose sales are not part time lawyers? Go for ARM
When MIPS understood that they are losing, they simply gave up on competing, and improving.
And in the end, the lunch went to MediaTek because it was the only SoC vendor that was ready to ship competitive SoCs with 4G baseband without rapacious licensing deals like Qualcomm do.