The addition of MIPS support to FreeBSD could mean new embedded applications for the chip architecture, Sean Michael Kerner reports in Enterprise Networking Planet. Mips processors are used in a broad range of consumer electronics as well as networking hardware.
When it comes to new features in an open source operating system, sometimes features are developed by community developers and other times they are contributed by commercial vendors. The recent FreeBSD 8.0 operating system release benefited from both types of contributions.
In particular, as part of the FreeBSD 8.0 release, there is new experimental MIPS support which was contributed by networking vendor Juniper Networks (NYSE: JNPR).