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MIPS Release 6 (R6) was announced for open use through the MIPS Open program on March 28, 2019. A contemporaneous report described free access with no licensing or royalty fees, subject to compatibility and certification conditions. That is a historical announcement—not confirmation that MIPS Open, its downloads, or those terms remain available today.
What MIPS Open announced in March 2019
EE Times reported that MIPS Open was making the 32-bit and 64-bit MIPS architecture, Release 6, available to participants. The report characterized access as free of charge, without licensing or royalty fees. Those statements describe the program as it was announced at the time; they do not establish current licensing terms. EE Times, March 28, 2019.
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The announcement concerned an architecture and a group of related resources, not one ready-made processor core. The reported initial package included:
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- MIPS SIMD Extensions and DSP extensions.
- Multi-threading, MCU, microMIPS, and virtualization.
- MIPS Open Tools for building, debugging, and deploying applications.
- FPGA training materials.
- Sample microAptiv RTL, which EE Times explicitly described as non-commercial.
Architecture access and the sample RTL were distinct parts of the offering. The report’s description of the sample core code as non-commercial should not be read as the same grant as the reported architecture access.
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What “open use” did—and did not—mean
According to EE Times, users agreed not to fragment the architecture and to maintain compatibility with the MIPS architecture specification. It also reported that MIPS-based cores and SoCs were to go through certification. These are the conditions reported at launch, not verified current requirements.
Art Swift, identified by EE Times as president of MIPS’s licensing business, said users could modify configurations, add instructions, and add accelerators within the architecture’s built-in flexibilities while remaining compatible. The report does not support interpreting “open use” as unrestricted modification without compatibility constraints. EE Times’ account of the launch terms.
Is MIPS Open still available?
The reviewed sources do not settle the program’s current operational or legal status. Wave Computing’s legacy MIPS Open page still describes the initiative and the R6 package, but carries a 2019 copyright; that page alone does not establish that the program is active or that its old terms still apply. Wave Computing’s legacy MIPS Open page.
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Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.What to check before using an R6 implementation or resource
If you are evaluating MIPS materials, confirm the details for the specific implementation or download rather than relying on the 2019 announcement:
- Revision and width: Identify the exact ISA revision and whether the target is 32-bit or 64-bit.
- Extensions: Check which optional extensions are implemented; the announcement named several, but does not mean every implementation included all of them.
- Compatibility: Establish which compatibility behavior the implementation promises and how any custom instructions or accelerators fit the specification.
- Software support: Verify the relevant toolchain and operating-system support for the target you intend to build or run.
- Rights and certification: Review the current license for the exact material and determine whether certification conditions apply. The launch report is not a substitute for current legal terms.
The available reporting establishes no R6-specific performance or adoption figure suitable for comparison. It also does not provide a current product comparison or independent benchmark results; those should not be inferred from the announcement.
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