Interview with MIPS: Drew Barbier and James Prior

MIPS’ unlikely rise to deliver RISC-V at ‘foundry scale.’

February 2, 2026

David Harold

Recent stories around MIPS, GlobalFoundries, and the wider RISC-V ecosystem point to a quiet but important shift in CPU IP. MIPS is no longer behaving like a niche or legacy player, but rather as a platform supplier aligned with safety-critical and real-time markets. In doing so, it is emerging as the most credible alternative to Arm outside the data center. MIPS’ James Prior (left) and Drew Barbier. (Source: JPR) We sat down at CES 2026 with MIPS’ Drew Barbier, VP of Products, and James Prior, head of Global Marketing. This was a few days before MIPS’ announcement that it was buying

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Interview with MIPS: Drew Barbier and James Prior

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