Choice of an ISA for Embedded Designs

Software investment is the biggest ticket item in any project. Hence the choice of an ISA that offers a scalable solution is an important consideration. MIPS and our SoC eco system offer distinct families of processor cores that span from 32-bit micro controllers all the way to 64-bit multi-threaded super-scalar cores from single-core to many cores, to address various segments of the embedded markets.  For either a new design or a follow on or upgrade to an existing design, the choice of MIPS as the ISA offers an ideal  path for protecting the software investment on a project, since one can scale the application up and down the performance scale seamlessly between a wide range of processors. The bulk of the effort in the migration to any new ISA is in the low-level initialization software. This paper illustrates the ease of migration from the ARM to MIPS architecture and highlight the areas that users need to focus on.