MIPS, by GlobalFoundries, CEO Sameer Wasson and CTO Yankin Tanurhan sit down with EE Times Nitin Dahad to discuss the recent acquisition of the Synopsys IP Processor Solutions business and the opportunity in physical AI.

Nitin Dahad of EE Times moderates a panel with Sameer Wasson, CEO of MIPS, by GlobalFoundries, and Andrea Gallo, CEO of RISC-V International, for a conversation on how the industry must rethink chip design for agentic AI.

Arteris FlexGen network-on-chip (NoC) IP and Magillem software solutions enable rapid development of MIPS-based high-performance, RISC-V platforms spanning automotive, embedded, and robotics markets.

MIPS has made some waves in the embedded processor IP community, especially with its recent acquisition of Synopsys’s ARC processor IP business.

When conversations turn to semiconductor foundries, they typically begin with leading-edge process nodes and the race toward ever-smaller geometries. However, although nanometer bragging rights dominate headlines, something quieter—and arguably more consequential—is unfolding elsewhere in the industry.

Recent stories around MIPS, GlobalFoundries, and the wider RISC-V ecosystem point to a quiet but important shift in CPU IP. MIPS is no longer behaving like a niche or legacy player, but rather as a platform supplier aligned with safety-critical and real-time markets. In doing so, it is emerging as the most credible alternative to Arm outside the data center.

The most recent addition to the MIPS Atlas family of RISC-V processors supports transformer- and agentic-language AI models at the edge.

Today sees a bold move to bring two key processor architectures, MIPS and ARC, under one umbrella, as GlobalFoundries announced it is buying Synopsys’ ARC processor IP solutions business, including its teams of engineers and designers, and integrating it into the MIPS business.

MIPS I8500 is a best-in-class match-action processor purpose-built for the Physical AI era—where sensing, thinking, acting, and communicating converge in real time. The MIPS I8500 features a scalable multithreaded architecture with 4 threads per core and support for multi-cluster deployments, enabling up to 24 threads per cluster. It delivers ultra-low-latency, deterministic data movement with integrated security, ideal for orchestrating packet flows across accelerators and enabling intelligent communication between compute blocks, humans, and networks.

GlobalFoundries (GF) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire MIPS, the 40-year-old processor company that has changed hands several times over that period. Having had a history in delivering RISC-based processing for gaming and then automotive, it pivoted in 2022 to a focus on delivering RISC-V-based processor IP and software tools for real-time computing in various applications, particularly for edge AI.