MIPS stands for Microprocessor Without Interlocked Pipeline Stages and is also a spoof on the stupid benchmark of the same name. The now ubiquious chip was developed as a project at Stanford University and has headed by Professor John L. Hennessy (Now president of Stanford.).
The Company
MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was the commercialization of the Stanford University VLSI project from the early 1980s that created the processor of the same name. The company was created by several of the MIPS Project founders, including Professor John L. Hennessy around 1984. The company was the first RISC processor company since IBM. Soon after its founding, MIPS released its first processor, the 32-bit RISC MIPS R2000 and made a good profit, with its first client being UK based, Whitechapel Workstations. Eventually, it became the sole producer of Silicon Graphics (SGI) who dropped its Motorola processors for their chips and would eventually aquire MIPS in 1992 when MIPS ran into extreme financial hardship.
After the aquisition MIPS became the MIPS Technologies subsidary of SGI and the MIPS operated as much as it had before the aquisition. However, with the arrival of the Rick Belluzzo, the profitable emmbeded chip section of MIPS was divested into today's MIPS Technologies. The rest of the MIPS division, especially the R1x000 design team remained with SGI and continues to produce the chips that SGI uses for their processors.
Today MIPS Technologies is doing exceedingly well most embedded systems are based on MIPS processors...the Playstation 2, cable boxes and many other things. It's success is amazing considering the trouble its former owner is in. MIPS Technologies is based in (Big surprise) Mountain View, California.
* MIPS is copyright MIPS Technologies Inc.