MIPS Technologies wants to develop consumer devices such as set-top boxes, digital TVs and home media players based on Android, Google's open-source platform.

This week, MIPS Technologies met a key milestone in that quest by making its source code publicly available.

The company also has started an Early Access program for a "small group of key customers" who will have access to specific hardware and code optimizations before they are publicly available, according to MIPS Technologies.

"We are seeing an enormous amount of customer interest in Android on the MIPS architecture," said Art Swift, vice president of marketing at MIPS Technologies, in a statement. "Android presents a compelling value proposition in bringing Internet connectivity and a broad range of applications to MIPS-based digital home devices."

MIPS Technologies said it has already demonstrated Android running on a home media player and a digital TV reference design and plans to demonstrate more solutions in the coming months.

"We are working closely with customers and partners to ensure that critical technologies are available for developers to take advantage of Android for consumer electronics," said Swift in the statement.

Last week, MIPS Technologies demonstrated its mCUE converged communications client for Android-based devices in Japan. The demonstration showed how embedded software products such as mCUE can enable VoIP, video chat and other IP communications in Android-based embedded equipment and consumer electronics devices.

Founded in 1998, MIPS Technologies designs industry-standard processor architectures and cores, including broadband devices from Linksys, DTVs and digital consumer devices from Sony, DVD recordable devices from Pioneer, digital set-top boxes from Motorola, network routers from Cisco, 32-bit microcontrollers from Microchip Technology and laser printers from Hewlett-Packard.

Swift told The New York Times that the Android platform is well-designed and versatile, which makes it easy to customize to other, non-hardware devices.

"It's really a beautifully architected system. Once people saw how straightforward it was to move from a handset to a netbook, then it began to be an 'aha' moment: 'What if I migrate this to a DTV or set-top box?'" he told the Times.