Godson developer wants MIPS license, says report

The report quoted Weiwu Hu, the lead designer of the Godson-2 and a professor at ICT, saying MIPS (Mountain View, Calif.) and ICT executives have been in talks on a licensing deal for nearly three years and both sides want to reach agreement.

The fact that the Godson-2, or Dragon, processor follows an unauthorized, unlicensed variation of the MIPS architecture, was highlighted by market research company In-Stat recently, which said the lack of license deal could create intellectual property (IP) issues.

Hu was then quoted in the English language online version of The People’s Daily saying that the Godson-2 processor infringes on no international intellectual property rights. “After we buy the MIPS architecture license, we can implement the MIPS instructions in the Godson, that will make the chip compatible with the software and make the porting of applications much easier,” the InfoWorld report quoted Hu as saying.

R&D engineers had previously described Godson-2 as being “MIPS-like”, something which Hu has been quoted as saying was a mistake. From now on ICT plans to state that the Godson architecture implements a subset of the MIPS instruction set that is not patented by MIPS, the report said.

Hu wants future Godson processors to be fully compatible with the MIPS instruction set, which would help the chip find acceptance with potential customers, the report said.