> What problem did MIPS solve in a unique way that others didn't?
The MIPS R2000 was debatably the first commercial RISC chip. It solved whatever problem you needed a really fast CPU for in 1985. The alternatives on the market were the Intel 386 and the Motorola 68000. The Intel 386 at 16 MHz did about 2 MIPS (heh - millions of instructions per second) with 32 bit integer math. At 16 MHz, the R2000 did about 10 MIPS. Even accounting for RISC code bloat, that's 3 - 4x faster.
Note how there were only two competitors selling 32-bit designs in the market they entered. I think that's probably the biggest impact of MIPS. They actually sold the chip! They wanted companies to design their own computer systems around it. Use it in an embedded device. Whatever. That was not the norm c. 1985 - 1988 for high-end silicon.
There were machines faster than the 386 or 68020 at that time. You could buy one of the fast microprocessor-based VAXes recently introduced. Or if not too squeezed for office space and with a blank cheque, one of the super-minis like a real VAX or IBM's new "mini-mainframe". After '86, maybe you'd buy one of the other RISC options, like SPARC or PA-RISC.
Whatever you bought, it would be the whole system. Take it or leave it. DEC would not sell you something like a CVAX processor all by itself just so you can build it into a product that will compete against them. (Well, they would sell you one, just not at a price you could afford if you aren't a defence contractor.)
Both DEC and SGI would use MIPS processors in their workstations of the late 80s, as did some less well-known names. The embarrassment of having to use a competitor's processor to sell a decently fast and affordable UNIX workstation would inspire DEC to create the Alpha. In this vein of "we'll sell it to whoever wants to buy it!" MIPS was also doing ARM-style core IP licensing, before ARM did. That's probably part of why MIPS was so prominent as an embedded architecture in the late 90s and early 2000s, in everything from handhelds to routers to satellites.
The MIPS R2000 was debatably the first commercial RISC chip. It solved whatever problem you needed a really fast CPU for in 1985. The alternatives on the market were the Intel 386 and the Motorola 68000. The Intel 386 at 16 MHz did about 2 MIPS (heh - millions of instructions per second) with 32 bit integer math. At 16 MHz, the R2000 did about 10 MIPS. Even accounting for RISC code bloat, that's 3 - 4x faster.
Note how there were only two competitors selling 32-bit designs in the market they entered. I think that's probably the biggest impact of MIPS. They actually sold the chip! They wanted companies to design their own computer systems around it. Use it in an embedded device. Whatever. That was not the norm c. 1985 - 1988 for high-end silicon.
There were machines faster than the 386 or 68020 at that time. You could buy one of the fast microprocessor-based VAXes recently introduced. Or if not too squeezed for office space and with a blank cheque, one of the super-minis like a real VAX or IBM's new "mini-mainframe". After '86, maybe you'd buy one of the other RISC options, like SPARC or PA-RISC.
Whatever you bought, it would be the whole system. Take it or leave it. DEC would not sell you something like a CVAX processor all by itself just so you can build it into a product that will compete against them. (Well, they would sell you one, just not at a price you could afford if you aren't a defence contractor.)
Both DEC and SGI would use MIPS processors in their workstations of the late 80s, as did some less well-known names. The embarrassment of having to use a competitor's processor to sell a decently fast and affordable UNIX workstation would inspire DEC to create the Alpha. In this vein of "we'll sell it to whoever wants to buy it!" MIPS was also doing ARM-style core IP licensing, before ARM did. That's probably part of why MIPS was so prominent as an embedded architecture in the late 90s and early 2000s, in everything from handhelds to routers to satellites.