mips Getting started with mips MARS MIPS Simulator

Example

MARS MIPS simulator is an assembly language editor, assembler, simulator & debugger for the MIPS processor, developed by Pete Sanderson and Kenneth Vollmar at Missouri State University (src).

You get the MARS for free here. As for installing the 4.5 version, you might need the suitable Java SDK for your system from here

Before assembling, the environment of this simulator can be simplisticly split to three segments: the editor at the upper left where all of the code is being written, the compiler/output right beneath the editor and the list of registers that represent the "CPU" for our program.

After assembling (by simply pressing F3) the environment changes, with two new segments getting the position of the editor: the text segment where

i) each line of assembly code gets cleared of "pseudoinstructions" (we'll talk about those in a sec) at the "basic" column and

ii) the machine code for each instruction at the "code" column,

and the data segment where we can have a look at a representation of the memory of a processor with little-endian order.

After assembling, we can execute our code either all at once (F5) or step by step (F7), as well as rewinding the execution several steps backwards to the back (F8).

Now, let's see the example code from above and explain each line:

.text
.globl main
main:            #main function

li    $v0, 11    #11=system code for printing a character, $v0=register that gets the system code for printing as value
la    $a0, 'a'   #'a'=our example character, $a0=register that accepts the character for printing
syscall          #Call to the System to execute our instructions and print the character at the a0 register 

li $v0, 10       #11=system code for terminating, $v0=register that gets the system code for terminating (optional, but desirable)
syscall          #Call to the System to terminate the execution

MARS accepts and exports files with the .asm filetype

But the code above prints just a character, what about the good ol' "Hello World"? What about, dunno, adding a number or something? Well, we can change what we had a bit for just that:

.data               #data section 
str: .asciiz "Hello world\n"  
number: .word 256
 
.text                 #code section 
.globl main 
main: 
li       $v0, 4                #system call for printing strings 
la       $a0, str              #loading our string from data section to the $a0 register
syscall  
       
la       $t0, number        #loading our number from data section to the $t0 register
lw       $s1, 0($t0)        #loading our number as a word to another register, $s1 

addi     $t2, $s1, 8         #adding our number ($s1) with 8 and leaving the sum to register $t2

sw       $t2, 0($t0)        #storing the sum of register $t2 as a word at the first place of $t0

li       $v0, 10               # system call for terminating the execution
syscall 

Before illustrating the results through MARS, a little more explanation about these commands is needed:

• System calls are a set of services provided from the operating system. To use a system call, a call code is needed to be put to $v0 register for the needed operation. If a system call has arguments, those are put at the $a0-$a2 registers. Here are all the system calls.

• li (load immediate) is a pseudo-instruction (we'll talk about that later) that instantly loads a register with a value. la (load address) is also a pseudo-instruction that loads an address to a register. With li $v0, 4 the $v0 register has now 4 as value, while la $a0, str loads the string of str to the $a0 register.

• A word is (as much as we are talking about MIPS) a 32 bits sequence, with bit 31 being the Most Significant Bit and bit 0 being the Least Significant Bit.

• lw (load word) transfers from the memory to a register, while sw (store word) transfers from a register to the memory. With the lw $s1, 0($t0) command, we loaded to $s1 register the value that was at the LSB of the $t0 register (thats what the 0 symbolizes here, the offset of the word), aka 256. $t0 here has the address, while $s1 has the value. sw $t2, 0($t0) does just the opposite job.

• MARS uses the Little Endian, meaning that the LSB of a word is stored to the smallest byte address of the memory.

• MIPS uses byte addresses, so an address is apart of its previous and next by 4.

By assembling the code from before, we can further understand how memory and registers exchange, disabling "Hexadecimal Values" from the Data Segment:

or enabling "ASCII" from the Data Segment:

Start it like this

$ java -jar Mars4_5.jar

Create this file and save it.

    .text
main:
    li    $s0,0x30
loop:
    move    $a0,$s0        # copy from s0 to a0
    
    li    $v0,11        # syscall with v0 = 11 will print out
    syscall            # one byte from a0 to the Run I/O window

    addi    $s0,$s0,3    # what happens if the constant is changed?
    
    li    $t0,0x5d
    bne    $s0,$t0,loop
    nop            # delay slot filler (just in case)

stop:    j    stop        # loop forever here
    nop            # delay slot filler (just in case)

Press F3 to assembly it and then press run. Now you are started compiling and executing MIPS code.