Physical AI will enable the next generation of autonomous robots to sense the world around them, think to create a plan based on their role and situational understanding, and act to implement that plan. The combination of functionally safe computing and real-time computing combined with multi-modal AI will drive intelligence into action for the $1T physical AI market opportunity.
Robots implementing Physical AI will include agricultural tractors, self-driving warehouse robots and industrial manufacturing automation, to healthcare, mobility assistance and self-driving vehicles. Physical AI will enable greater flexibility, safety, precision, and reliability in the critical systems we rely on every day.
To address the challenges of the compute requirements of physical AI, MIPS has unveiled our vision for compute subsystems in three categories: Sense, Think, and Act. These three compute categories are the Atlas portfolio of MIPS product lines.
Customers will leverage MIPS deep expertise to utilize turnkey solutions that ease adoption and simplify integration. MIPS Atlas products will include reference platforms to enable system level evaluation of the subsystem without needing to be a deep expert in the application space or the microarchitecture running the code.
Sense:
Collecting data from the world around it, a physical AI platform needs many different senses to provide data that can be combined and processed. Highly efficient, high-throughput software and purpose-built hardware process the large quantity of sensor data for rapid decision making in autonomous systems. Data movement subsystems with use case focused protocol enablement are delivered by application and protocol stack software, configuration tools, and middleware with standardized APIs. Today, we announce the addition of the MIPS I8600 compute subsystem to our data movement subsystem portfolio, joining the P8700 and I8500 subsystems. The MIPS I8600 subsystem is focused on enabling network processing for a variety of applications for automotive, communications, datacenter, and industrial markets. More details on the Sense portfolio, including the MIPS I8600 subsystem configurations, are shared in our blog: Link.
Think:
Generative physical AI extends current generative AI models with an understanding of spatial relationships and physical behavior of the 3D world. This is done by providing additional data that contains information about the spatial relationships and physical rules
of the real world during the AI training process, mimicking the inputs from sensor fusion platforms. The MIPS S8200 autonomous decision engine delivers reinforcement learning acceleration for the mixture-of-experts generative AI models that combine the action, visual, and language models needed by Physical AI, with efficiency of execution. As the growth of autonomous machines rises, event-driven compute capabilities at the endpoint provide privacy, security, accuracy, with fast decisions. For more information about the MIPS Think portfolio and the MIPS S8200 decision engine, please see our blog: Link.
Act:
The actions of autonomous platforms are driven by real-time control platforms with low-latency, reliability, determinism, and certifiable functional safety. MIPS M8500 real-time compute platforms enable extreme levels of real-time performance for Physical AI functions such as motor control, digital power conversion, and battery management. The MIPS M8500 real-time compute subsystems combine general-purpose microcontrollers with MIPS expertise in real-time execution into an easy to adopt, highly-efficient compute subsystem. This innovative approach replaces traditional general-purpose microcontrollers paired with proprietary accelerators that are hard to program and inefficient to use with a platform that is up to 3x faster, use less power, and is easy to adopt and use. Learn more about the MIPS M8500 real-time compute subsystem here: Link.
Develop and Deploy
The MIPS Atlas Explorer enables our customers to analyze real-world workloads with deep insights into the micro-architectural function and efficiency, with Atlas Explorer’s high-fidelity processor modelling technology. The Atlas Explorer platform puts the workload first for hardware/software co-development, enabling a shift-left approach to system level optimization. Atlas Explorer helps enable digital-twin conceptualization of production platforms for MIPS compute platforms, supporting long-term product life cycles. Learn more about MIPS Atlas Explorer in our blog, here: Link.
MIPS is on a mission to enable the world’s leading semiconductor companies, system platform providers, and original equipment manufacturers to build new autonomous platforms in the Physical AI era. Our innovative new portfolio of Sense, Think, & Act, compute subsystems put MIPS in pole position to drive intelligence into action.
The MIPS Atlas portfolio of compute subsystems for autonomous platforms will be launched in the coming months, with the MIPS P8700 available now and the MIPS I8500 is available to lead customers for evaluation. Availability of the MIPS M8500 real-time compute subsystem for lead customer evaluation is expected mid-year 2025, with broad availability of our reference design, including silicon, in 1H26. We expect our first customer platform in production in 2027, with a leading automotive OEM.
MIPS is an exhibitor at Embedded World 2025 from March 11th – 13th, in Nuremburg, Germany. To request a meeting, please contact us here: MIPs.com/events.
