“A decade before IBM launched the world’s first smartphone, a team of Stanford University researchers and Silicon Valley veterans came together to design a microprocessor architecture that would forever change the landscape of computing. The year was 1986 and the newly-formed company was MIPS Computer Systems Inc. – a small start-up led by current-day Stanford University president John L. Hennessy. This is the story of MIPS R2000, the first commercially-available microprocessor chipset to implement the MIPS instruction set architecture (ISA) and the first RISC processor widely sold through a profitable licensing business model that has become so widespread today.”