One of the side-effects of the collapse of Imagination Technologies, sparked by Apple’s decision to design its own graphics processor, was the impact on MIPS. Imagination had acquired MIPS in late 2012 as part of a bid to offer a broad platform – comparable to ARM’s – spanning CPUs, GPUs and connectivity. But when it lost the crucial Apple business, it put MIPS up for sale at a critical juncture in the unit’s attempt to reinvent itself. The venerable processor IP provider had failed to make much headway against ARM in the mobile market, but was building a new business around wearables processing units (WPUs) and other IoT-related designs, especially through licensees and partners in China. Shortly before the crisis…