The MIPS silicon manufacturer is one of the oldest RISC chip manufacturers, used in several systems since the late 80s - even Windows had a MIPS port in the early 90s.

The company has been struggling with an increasingly lower market share and risked bankruptcy in recent years, ultimately leading to acquisition by start-up Wave Computing, which also faced bankruptcy last year.

However, the company has exited bankruptcy and has become a member of RISC-V International, the non-profit organisation managing the fully open-hardware ISA, substantially replacing its architecture with the de facto open chip standard.

Licensing of the original MIPS architecture to third parties will probably be managed as before, so that the "old" architecture will remain available upon need. This is officially known as the "8th generation" of MIPS chips, indicating a total architectural gap from the previous seven iterations, essentially leaving the old architecture and fully embracing the new one.

The Electronic Engineering Journal says it's likely that the new MIPS will continue to honour pre-existing licensing agreements, but it's unclear what level of support the company will offer for older MIPS-based chip designs.