Athene's Crash Course to Programming With MIPs

How to program in MIPS32 Assembly!

DO NOT PROGRAM RIGHT AWAY. Write your pseudocode first.
Translate into Assembly.

Commenting: use hash mark, ex: # this is a comment

Declaring Segments	Explanation
.data	start of "data related section"
.text	start of "code related section"

Declaring Integer and Floating Point data	Explanation
.word w1,w2,...,wn	Allocates for n 32 bit items and initializes them to listed values
.word w:n	Allocates n 32 bits items and initializes them to w
Note for word	MIPS32 uses word(32 bits) to store an integer, it can be used to store any 32 bit items.
.float f1, f2,...,fn	Allocates for n single-precision floating point numbers and initializes them to listed values.
.double d1, d2,...,dn	Allocates for n double-precision.
.byte	Allocates n 8 bits
.half	allocates n 16 bits
.space	allocates b uninitialized bytes
.ascii "string"	allocates and initilizes mem for/with "string"
.asciiz	same as .ascii but also add null-termination, like c-style strings.
.globl symbol	makes a global symbol
Note on globl	main is typically global.
.align n	Aligns next data item on 2^n byte boundry.

Common Types of Instructions:

Arithmetic or Logical
Constant Manipulation
Comparison
Branches
Jump
Load
Store
Data movement
Floating-point
Exception/Interrupt
Trap

Instruction	Explination
addi	Item 2
Item 4	Item 5

MARS specific:

syscall:

Assembly Templates -Main Program

##########################################################################
# Title: Author:
MIPS32 Assembly Language Getting Started
# Class: CS2318-??? Due: Submitted:
##########################################################################
# Functional description:
# ...
##########################################################################
# Register usage:
# ...
##########################################################################
# Pseudocode description:
# ...
############################ data segment ################################
13
############################ data segment ################################
.data
...
############################ code segment ################################
.text
.globl main
main:
...
li $v0, 10 # exit
syscall

Assembly Templates -Functions

##########################################################################
# Function name:
MIPS32 Assembly Language Getting Started
# Function name:
##########################################################################
# Functional description:
# ...
##########################################################################
# Input/output description:
# ...
##########################################################################
# Example calling sequence:
# ...
##########################################################################
# R i t
how parameters are passed
& how results are returned
14
# Register usage:
# ...
##########################################################################
# Pseudocode description:
# ...
##########################################################################
<proc name>:
...