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+Arch Specific Notes -- MIPS
+===========================
+
+The MIPS port uses the ``mips`` keyword. It focuses upon commonly available
+hardware -- mainly SGI and Cobalt systems -- although various embedded and
+special purpose boards are also supported.
+
+The ``mips`` keyword covers a huge range of architectures, CPUs and hardware,
+from tiny embedded devices up to server class kit with many tens of CPUs.
+
+.. Note:: Terminology
+    ABI stands for "Application Binary Interface". It refers to issues like
+    calling conventions (which registers are used for passing parameters when
+    calling functions) and the size of data types. ISA stands for "Instruction
+    Set Architecture", and refers to the instructions available and the number
+    and types of registers for a given CPU.
+
+MIPS ABIs
+---------
+
+The ``o32`` ABI was a wonderful invention by SGI that was good at the time, but
+later turned out to be a little bit short-sighted and inefficient. The ``n32``
+ABI corrects that problem by pretending to be 32 bit, whilst in reality being 64
+bit. ``n64`` is another 64 bit ABI, this time not pretending to be 32 bit, which
+is therefore large, fat and yet very powerful.
+
+All of these ABIs can be both big and little endian, since MIPS CPUs come in
+both flavours, although most hardware does not support both options.
+
+All of these ABIs are popular amongst various applications domains. None of them
+actually work correctly.
+
+MIPS ISAs
+---------
+
+The most commonly seen MIPS ISAs are mips2, mips3, mips4, mips32 and mips64. If
+you encounter a situation in which you need to know about the differences
+between these, talk to the MIPS team.
+
+Not Dropping ``CFLAGS`` on MIPS
+-------------------------------
+
+Because ``CFLAGS`` are sometimes used to specify ISA and ABI information, it is
+vital that packages honour this setting. See `Not Filtering Variables`_.
+
+Additional MIPS Keywording Requirements
+---------------------------------------
+
+.. Note:: This section is in addition to the guidelines in `Keywording`_. It
+  discusses *additional* requirements for the MIPS architectures.
+
+For a package to have the ``~mips`` keyword added, the following additional
+items must generally hold:
+
+* The package should work on both big and little endian systems, on both pure
+  32 bit and pure 64 bit systems and on systems with differing kernel and
+  userland ABIs.
+
+It is generally expected that anyone who does keywording for MIPS should be on
+the ``mips@`` alias.
+
+Contacting the MIPS Team
+-------------------------
+
+The MIPS team can be contacted:
+
+* Via Bugzilla bugs assigned to ``mips@``
+* Via email to the ``mips@`` email alias
+* Via email to the ``gentoo-mips`` mailing list
+* Via the ``#gentoo-mips`` IRC channel on Freenode
+
+.. vim: set ft=glep tw=80 sw=4 et spell spelllang=en : ..
+