[hajile]

That's because it's a better ISA than ARM or x86 (both of which carry loads of legacy crud) and the early MIPS-related patents have also expired. In addition, there are loads of MIPS textbooks out there.

There are still lots of markets that use MIPS. In addition, China seems interested in a national ISA and seems quite invested in MIPS. I wouldn't write it off just yet.

I would say that MIPS is the only ISA that has definitively proven itself in everything from tiny microcontrollers to multi-core, SMT (hyperthreaded) monsters that run most of the world's networks or the upcoming Chinese petaflop supercomputers.