MIPS Technologies — the company behind many industry-standard processor architectures and cores for home entertainment, communications, networking and portable multimedia markets — announced that Google’s Android platform can now work on their MIPS architecture. Moreover, they said they’ll make the MIPS-optimized source code publicly available within 60 days. As a result, Android will be entering the vast MIPS development community across the world.
In addition, the company announced it has joined the Open Embedded Software Foundation (OESF), an organization focused on standardization and development of Android platforms for embedded devices beyond mobile handsets.
From the press release:
Android provides a common framework across devices to leverage the large number of software application developers that are writing applications for the Android market. Initially finding success in the mobile phone market, Android is now set to move into other digital consumer devices. With MIPS Technologies’ leadership position in the digital home, this announcement lays the groundwork to enable Android for these products. Android’s ready-to-use software stack provides a device-agnostic application development platform, and a common framework for the industry. With Android and the dynamic open source development community around it, developers can easily and quickly create new applications and OEMs can leverage the growing set of applications for their devices. With the MIPS ecosystem around Android, OEMs will be able to quickly optimize Android for their specific platforms.
Commenting on the announcement, MIPS Technologies’ Art Swift said: “MIPS is excited to enable Android for the consumer electronics markets where we are traditionally strong, and also to proliferate MIPS into new markets – such as the emerging MID segment. The heightened multimedia and software requirements of these next-generation connected devices demand high performance. As Android extends into these new markets, the processing power of MIPS can really be a powerful differentiator.”
More information about the Android platform and MIPS is available from this page on MIPS’ website.