Illustrated below is a high magnification digital image recorded in differential interference contrast (DIC) reflected light microscopy of surface features on a MIPS R10000 microprocessor integrated circuit. The features present on busses, registers and memory caches were enhanced through utilization of oblique illumination with blue and red gels.

Examine a larger version of this digital image.

In early 1996, chip design corporation MIPS followed their quickly conceived R8000-R8010 microprocessor-coprocessor set with the highly regarded R10000 microprocessor. The 64-bit MIPS R10000 integrated circuit is a super-scalar, reduced instruction set computing-specified (RISC) chip with multiple floating-point units and all the extra features available on high-end microprocessors of the period. The earlier versions featured clock speeds between 180 MHz and 195 MHz, and were fabricated with 6.8 million transistors placed on a 298-square millimeter silicon die using advanced 0.35-micron process technology. By 1998, MIPS released two faster versions rated at clock speeds of 250 MHz and 275 MHz, respectively.

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