See MIPS Run, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1 RISCs and MIPS Architectures

MIPS is the most elegant among the effective RISC architectures; even the competition thought so, as evidenced by the strong MIPS influence to be seen in later architectures like DEC’s Alpha and HP’s Precision. Elegance by itself doesn’t get you far in a competitive marketplace, but MIPS microprocessors have generally managed to be among the most efficient of each generation by remaining among the simplest.

Relative simplicity was a commercial necessity for MIPS Computer Systems Inc., which spun off in 1985 from an academic project to make and market the chips. As a result, the architecture had (and perhaps still has) the largest range of active manufacturers in the industry—working from ASIC cores (MIPS ...