Are these still MIPS III knockoffs? Interesting to see what continued investment has resulted in. Shame they weren't able to start with the R10k line and evolve from there. Speculating on what an R18000 descendent with 20 years of development is a nifty what-might-have-been.
More variety in architecture such as not the Von Neumann architecture and Lisp and Scheme indigenous chips would be nice to play with A.I. programming.
1. Develop chip arguably competitive with western rivals*
2. Invade Taiwan and over TSMC
3. Profit??