GlobalFoundries announced on Tuesday that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire MIPS, a developer of RISC-V-based solutions and IP. The deal will enable GlobalFoundries to offer its own processors and other products based on the RISC-V instruction set architecture (ISA), which will make the company a rival to some of its foundry clients. Yet, the companies stress that MIPS will operate as a standalone business.
The takeover enhances GlobalFoundries' IP portfolio with MIPS' technologies, including the company's general-purpose CPU IP, AI inference acceleration IP, and various sensors. MIPS recently expanded its processor offerings based on the RISC-V ISA, so its Atlas product line includes a variety of cores suited for both general-purpose and real-time processing, as well as specialized cores designed for AI edge workloads. These cores are designed to enable high performance at a relatively low power consumption for compute-heavy workloads in embedded systems.
