The R3000 is a 32-bit RISC

microprocessor A microprocessor is a computer processor where the data processing logic and control is included on a single integrated circuit, or a small number of integrated circuits. The microprocessor contains the arithmetic, logic, and control circ ...

chipset In a computer system, a chipset is a set of electronic components in one or more integrated circuits known as a "Data Flow Management System" that manages the data flow between the processor, memory and peripherals. It is usually found on the mo ...

developed by

MIPS Computer Systems MIPS Technologies, Inc., formerly MIPS Computer Systems, Inc., was an American fabless semiconductor design company that is most widely known for developing the MIPS architecture and a series of RISC CPU chips based on it. MIPS provides proc ...

that implemented the

MIPS I MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a family of reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architectures (ISA)Price, Charles (September 1995). ''MIPS IV Instruction Set'' (Revision 3.2), MIPS Technologies, ...

instruction set architecture (ISA). Introduced in June 1988, it was the second MIPS implementation, succeeding the R2000 as the flagship MIPS microprocessor. It operated at 20, 25 and 33.33 MHz. The MIPS 1 instruction set is small compared to those of the contemporary

80x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its Intel 8088, 8088 variant. The 808 ...

and

680x0 The Motorola 68000 series (also known as 680x0, m68000, m68k, or 68k) is a family of 32-bit complex instruction set computer (CISC) microprocessors. During the 1980s and early 1990s, they were popular in personal computers and workstations and ...

architectures, encoding only more commonly used operations and supporting few

addressing mode Addressing modes are an aspect of the instruction set architecture in most central processing unit (CPU) designs. The various addressing modes that are defined in a given instruction set architecture define how the machine language instructions i ...

s. Combined with its fixed instruction length and only three different types of instruction formats, this simplified instruction decoding and processing. It employed a 5-stage

instruction pipeline In computer engineering, instruction pipelining or ILP is a technique for implementing instruction-level parallelism within a single processor. Pipelining attempts to keep every part of the processor busy with some instruction by dividing inco ...

, enabling execution at a rate approaching one instruction per cycle, unusual for its time. This MIPS generation supports up to four co-processors. In addition to the CPU core, the R3000 microprocessor includes a Control Processor (CP), which contains a

Translation Lookaside Buffer A translation lookaside buffer (TLB) is a memory cache that stores the recent translations of virtual memory to physical memory. It is used to reduce the time taken to access a user memory location. It can be called an address-translation cache. ...

and a

Memory Management Unit A memory management unit (MMU), sometimes called paged memory management unit (PMMU), is a computer hardware unit having all memory references passed through itself, primarily performing the translation of virtual memory addresses to physical a ...

. The CP works as a coprocessor. Besides the CP, the R3000 can also support an external R3010 numeric coprocessor, along with two other external coprocessors. The R3000 CPU does not include level 1

cache Cache, caching, or caché may refer to: Places United States * Cache, Idaho, an unincorporated community * Cache, Illinois, an unincorporated community * Cache, Oklahoma, a city in Comanche County * Cache, Utah, Cache County, Utah * Cache County ...

. Instead, its on-chip cache controller operates external data and instruction caches of up to 256 KB each. It can access both caches during the same clock cycle. The R3000 found much success and was used by many companies in their

workstation A workstation is a special computer designed for technical or scientific applications. Intended primarily to be used by a single user, they are commonly connected to a local area network and run multi-user operating systems. The term ''workstat ...

s and servers. Users included: *

Ardent Computer Stardent Computer, Inc. was a manufacturer of graphics supercomputer workstations in the late 1980s. The company was formed in 1989 when Ardent Computer Corporation (formerly Dana Computer, Inc.) and Stellar Computer Inc. merged. History Stellar ...

* Atari COJAG (A Modifided

Atari Jaguar The Atari Jaguar is a home video game console developed by Atari Corporation and released in North America in November 1993. Part of the fifth generation of video game consoles, it competed with the 16-bit Sega Genesis, the Super NES and th ...

For Arcade Systems) *

Digital Equipment Corporation Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC ), using the trademark Digital, was a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s. The company was co-founded by Ken Olsen and Harlan Anderson in 1957. Olsen was president un ...

(DEC) for their

DECstation The DECstation was a brand of computers used by DEC, and refers to three distinct lines of computer systems—the first released in 1978 as a word processing system, and the latter (more widely known) two both released in 1989. These compri ...

workstations and

multiprocessor Multiprocessing is the use of two or more central processing units (CPUs) within a single computer system. The term also refers to the ability of a system to support more than one processor or the ability to allocate tasks between them. There ar ...

DECsystem DECsystem was a line of server computers from Digital Equipment Corporation. They were based on MIPS architecture processors and ran DEC's version of the UNIX operating system, called ULTRIX. They ranged in size from workstation-style desktop enc ...

servers *

Evans & Sutherland Evans & Sutherland is a pioneering American computer firm in the computer graphics field. Its current products are used in digital projection environments like planetariums. Its simulation business, which it sold to Rockwell Collins, sold products ...

for their Vision (ESV) series workstations *

for their

MIPS RISC/os RISC/os is a discontinued UNIX operating system developed by MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. from 1985 to 1992, for their computer workstations and servers, including such models as the MIPS M/120 server and MIPS Magnum workstation. It was also kno ...

Unix workstations and servers. *

NEC is a Japanese multinational information technology and electronics corporation, headquartered in Minato, Tokyo. The company was known as the Nippon Electric Company, Limited, before rebranding in 1983 as NEC. It provides IT and network soluti ...

for their RISC EWS4800 workstations and UP4800 servers. *

Prime Computer Prime Computer, Inc. was a Natick, Massachusetts-based producer of minicomputers from 1972 until 1992. With the advent of PCs and the decline of the minicomputer industry, Prime was forced out of the market in the early 1990s, and by the end of ...

Pyramid Technology Pyramid Technology Corporation was a computer company that produced a number of RISC-based minicomputers at the upper end of the performance range. It was based in the San Francisco Bay Area of California They also became the second company to s ...

Seiko Epson Seiko Epson Corporation, or simply known as Epson, is a Japanese multinational electronics company and one of the world's largest manufacturers of computer printers and information- and imaging-related equipment. Headquartered in Suwa, Nagano ...

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and sof ...

for their Professional IRIS, Personal IRIS and Indigo workstations, and the multiprocessor Power Series visualization systems *

Sony , commonly stylized as SONY, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan. As a major technology company, it operates as one of the world's largest manufacturers of consumer and professiona ...

for their PlayStation and PlayStation 2 (SCPH-10000 to SCPH-700XX - clocked at 37.5 MHz for use as an I/O CPU and at 33.8 MHz for compatibility with PlayStation games) video game consoles, and

NEWS News is information about current events. This may be provided through many different media: word of mouth, printing, postal systems, broadcasting, electronic communication, or through the testimony of observers and witnesses to events. N ...

workstations, as well as the Bemani System 573 Analog arcade unit, which runs on the R3000A. *

Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum up ...

for their NonStop Cyclone/R and CLX/R fault-tolerant servers * Whitechapel Workstations for their Hitech-20 workstation * New Horizons Probe The R3000 was also used as an embedded microprocessor. When advances in technology rendered it obsolete for high-performance systems, it found continued use in lower-cost designs. Companies such as

LSI Logic LSI Logic Corporation, an American company founded in Milpitas, California, was a pioneer in the ASIC and EDA industries. It evolved over time to design and sell semiconductors and software that accelerated storage and networking in data center ...

developed derivatives of the R3000 specifically for

embedded system An embedded system is a computer system—a combination of a computer processor, computer memory, and input/output peripheral devices—that has a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electronic system. It is ''embedded'' ...

s. The R3000 was a further development of the R2000 with minor improvements including larger TLB and a faster bus to the external caches. The R3000 die contained 115,000 transistors and measured about 75,000 square mils (48 mm²). MIPS was a

fabless Fabless manufacturing is the design and sale of hardware devices and semiconductor chips while outsourcing their fabrication (or ''fab'') to a specialized manufacturer called a semiconductor foundry. These foundries are typically, but not exclu ...

semiconductor company, so the R3000 was fabricated by MIPS partners including

Integrated Device Technology Integrated Device Technology, Inc., is an American corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, that designs, manufactures, and markets low-power, high-performance mixed-signal semiconductor solutions for the advanced communications, com ...

(IDT),

, NEC Corporation,

Performance Semiconductor A performance is an act of staging or presenting a play, concert, or other form of entertainment. It is also defined as the action or process of carrying out or accomplishing an action, task, or function. Management science In the work place ...

, and others. It was fabricated in a 1.2 μm

complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor Complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS, pronounced "sea-moss", ) is a type of metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) fabrication process that uses complementary and symmetrical pairs of p-type and n-type MOSFE ...

(CMOS) process with two levels of

aluminium interconnect In integrated circuits (ICs), interconnects are structures that connect two or more circuit elements (such as transistors) together electrically. The design and layout of interconnects on an IC is vital to its proper function, performance, power ef ...

Derivatives of the R3000 for non-embedded applications include: * R3000A - A further development by MIPS introduced in 1989. It operated at clock frequencies up to 40 MHz. * PR3400 - Developed by Performance Semiconductor, introduced in May 1991, also at up to 40 MHz. It integrated the Performance Semiconductor PR3000A and PR3010A onto a single die. Derivatives of the R3000 for embedded applications include: * PR31700 - A 75 MHz microcontroller from

Philips Semiconductors NXP Semiconductors N.V. (NXP) is a Dutch semiconductor designer and manufacturer with headquarters in Eindhoven, Netherlands. The company employs approximately 31,000 people in more than 30 countries. NXP reported revenue of $11.06 billion in 2 ...

. Fabricated in a 350 nm process, delivered in a 208-pin LQFP, it operated at 3.3 V and dissipated only 350 mW. * RISController - A family of low-end microcontrollers from IDT. Models include the R3041, R3051, R3052, R3071 and R3081. * TX3900 - A microcontroller from Toshiba. *

Mongoose-V The Mongoose-V 32-bit microprocessor for spacecraft onboard computer applications is a radiation-hardened and expanded 10–15 MHz version of the MIPS R3000 CPU. Mongoose-V was developed by Synova of Melbourne, Florida, USA, with support from ...

- A radiation-hardened and expanded 10–15 MHz CPU for use on spacecraft, it is still in use today in applications such as

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the US federal government responsible for the civil List of government space agencies, space program ...

's New Horizons space probe.

References

"MIPS Technologies R3000"

References

Further reading