Imagination to battle ARM with MIPS server chips

Imagination Technologies, the designer of graphics chips for the iPhone and iPad, will release a new CPU design next year for low-power servers, said the  company’s CEO.

It is part of a broad push by Imagination to expand the use of Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages (MIPS) chips in all kinds of products, including servers, tablets, smart phones and wearable computers. Imagination inherited the architecture when it bought financially struggling MIPS Technologies last year.

"The intent with MIPS is to cover all the markets where a CPU is relevant," said Hossein Yassaie, Imagination’s CEO, at a press event in Silicon Valley on Wednesday.

It is a new and bold effort by Imagination, which is best known for the PowerVR graphics chips used in many top-tier mobile devices, including Google Glass. It hopes to expand the MIPS business in areas where the architecture is already strong, such as networking and home media systems, and also to plough new ground.

That will mean increased competition with Imagination’s rival ARM Holdings. ARM is the dominant designer of CPUs for smart phones and tablets, and it’s also targeting the server market, so the moves by Imagination could set up a grand battle between the two companies over the next few years. ARM, meanwhile, is also going for a bigger slice of Imagination’s graphics business.

In servers, both companies are targeting low-power "hyperscale" servers, used by companies such as Facebook and Google to run massive online workloads. They will both have to compete with incumbent Intel, which has stepped up its own efforts to build low-power chips.

ARM and Imagination both develop chip designs that they license to other companies to manufacture. They each offer architectural licenses, which let companies design their own chips from scratch, and licenses for complete core designs, which can be turned into finished products more quickly.

Companies such as Broadcom and Cavium already build MIPS chips for specialized network equipment using an architectural license. But to promote MIPS more broadly, Imagination will offer complete core designs for servers as well.

Asked to give a timeframe, Yassaie said Imagination’s upcoming Series5 "Warrior" CPUs will cover every segment of the market, including servers, by the end of 2014. It will take a further two to three years for chip makers to create finished server products and get them to market, Yassaie said.

"So for us to be a significant player in [servers] it will take several years. But in terms of technology, come the end of next year I would expect to have a solution for all the markets that are important for a CPU to be in," he said.

IDG News Service

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