 MIPS Computer Systems Inc. was founded in 1984 by a group of researchers from Stanford University that included John L. Hennessy and Chris Rowen.These researchers had worked on a project called MIPS (for "Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages"), one of the projects that pioneered the RISC concept.Other principal founders were Skip Stritter, formerly a Motorola technologist, and John Moussouris, formerly of IBM.