MIPS Release 5 was announced today as a new MIPS processor architecture that encompasses MIPS32, MIPS64, and microMIPS instruction set architectures. MIPS "R5" brings in two years of work to deliver new processor features.

The next-generation MIPS Release 5 architecture brings in a MIPS SIMD architecture (MSA) module for greater computational abilities, Scalable Virtualization (SZ) for secure hardware-based virtualization, Enhanced Virtual Addressing (EVA) for extended memory address space addressing, and support for popular multi-threading and DSP extensions.

In terms of seeing MIPS R5 hardware, the company is now licensing the specification to companies and they say there are already several MIPS licensees that have products in development.

For more information on the MIPS Release 5 architecture, there is the press release at MIPS.com.