[vishnu]

Yeah, the MIPS ISA is legacy in the same way the HP PA-RISC is.

Well I'm the first to admit that I don't follow microprocessor development, by any vendor, at ALL, but MIPS seems to be pretty thrilled with themselves about their eVocore processors, and from what they're saying about them, if it's in fact not just marketing speak, they look pretty impressive:

https://www.mips.com/products/risc-v/

I think there's a big difference between making changes to an instruction set architecture and making newer/better CPUs. I mean, if MIPS likes their instruction set then yeah, I don't see any problem leaving it alone. Farting around with the instruction set just makes headaches for the compiler writers, including the ones who work for you.

EDIT: And as I've said many times in the past, the amount of money MIPS charges for their compilers and development environment are, in my humble opinion, ridiculous. But then if you think you're going to sell a million set top MIPS boxes, I guess it's not that big a deal, and that must be who MIPS thinks their customer base is...