MIPS Technologies Porting Android 4.1 to MIPS Architecture

angry tapir writes with news on Android getting support for a third architecture. From the article: "ARM rival MIPS is continuing its push to make a mark in low-cost tablets and quickly trying to bring Android 4.1 (Jellybean) to its processors. 'We are working aggressively on bringing Jelly Bean to MIPS, and expect that it will be available to our licensees very soon,' said Jen Bernier-Santarini, director of corporation communications at MIPS, in an email. Tablets with MIPS processors are largely low-cost and have found buyers mostly in developing countries. MIPS last week said a new tablet called Miumiu W1 from Chinese company Ramos would become available in a few months in India, Latin America and Europe. The tablet has a 7-inch screen, a MIPS processor running at 1GHz, front camera and a microSD slot for expandable storage."

Re:In case you're wondering

[bluefoxlucid]

OEM chip prices like the Tegra 3 at $35 for a quad core 1.4GHz with a fifth extremely-low-power core bounded to 500MHz in single processor mode? With a full system-on-chip including system bridges, memory controllers, and full nVidia graphics, $35 is ridiculous. Why a quad core Sandy Bridge processor doesn't cost half that!

Re:In case you're wondering

[tepples]

OEM chip prices like the Tegra 3 at $35

As a comment to a recent anti-Ouya story on Slashdot pointed out, even the data sheet for the Tegra 3 is available only to the highest volume manufacturers.

Incidentally...

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Forgive my ignorance; but when and how did MIPS get relegated to second-class status? I still see them crop up from time to time, certain cheapy router SoCs still come out with MIPS cores; but ARM appears to have gone rampaging across much of the territory that Intel hasn't already entrenched themselves in.

Was there a fuckup or an epic design win at some point in the past?

Re:Incidentally...

[Anonymous Coward]

MIPS is stuck in an unfortunate limbo between ARM and PowerPC. They lost the home console market to PowerPC (PS1, PS2, N64 were MIPS, but NGC, 360, Wii, PS3 are PowerPC). They lost the portable console market to ARM (PSP was MIPS, PS Vita is ARM, and Nintendo went straight from Z80 to ARM). They're still popular for el cheapo home routers, but they're being squeezed by ARM on one side (small servers/plug-boxes/routers) and by PowerPC and Atom on the other side (NAS, larger home servers). Pro networking gear, of course, runs on PowerPC.

This is a doomed attempt to gain a small slice of the cheapo Chinese tablet market, but honestly, with Chinese ARM chips like the Allwinner A10 out there, their chances of success are minimal.