MIPS (Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipelined Stages) is a reduced instruction set computer (RISC) instruction set architecture (ISA) developed by MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, based in the United States. Computer architecture courses in universities and technical schools often study the MIPS architecture. The architecture greatly influenced later RISC architectures such as Alpha. In March 2021, MIPS announced that the development of the MIPS architecture had ended as the company is making the transition to RISC-V.