Mips assembly examples

To help you refresh your MIPS assembly skills you are strongly encouraged to study this small collection of example programs. Each program demonstrates a small collection of features of the MIPS assembly language.

The mips-examples repository

Before you continue you should already have cloned the mips-examples repository. If you have not done this already, follow these instructions before you continue. For each of the example files in the repository:

Read the source code.
Load the program in MARS and single step the program.
Try to understand how the program works.
Add your own experiments.

hello.s

File: hello.s
Description: A small “Hello World” program.
Assembly directives: .data, .asciiz and .text
Instructions: li and la.
System calls: print_string and exit.

basics.s

File: basics.s
Description: The basics of MIPS assembly.
Assembly directives: .data, .text, .space, .word and .asciiz.
Instructions: li, la, lw, add, addi, sw and move.
System calls: print_string, print_int, print_char and exit.

jump_and_branches.s

File: jump_and_branches.s
Description: Unconditional and conditional branches.
Implemented control structures: if-then-else and infinite loop.
Assembly directives: .data, .text, and .asciiz.
Instructions: j, blt and bge.

arrays.c

File: arrays.s
Description: Allocation and usage of arrays.
Data structures: Array of integers and array of strings.

subroutines.s

File: subroutines.s
Description: A short introduction to the basic use of subroutines.
Instructions introduced: jal (Jump And Link) and jr (Jump Register).
Register introduced: $ra (Return Address)
Concepts introduced: The register use convention.