MIPS Assembly Language Programming

Chapter 3
Advanced MIPS Tutorial
by Daniel J. Ellard
This chapter continues the tutorial for MIPS assembly language programming and
the SPIM environment 1 . This chapter introduces more advanced topics, such as
how functions and advanced data structures can be implemented in MIPS assembly
language.
3.1 Function Environments and Linkage
One of the most important benefits of a high-level language such as C is the notion
of a function. In C, a function provides several useful abstractions:
• The mapping of actual parameters to formal parameters.
• Allocation and initialization of temporary local storage. This is particularly
important in languages which allow recursion: each call to the function must
get its own copy of any local variables, to prevent one call to a recursive function
from clobbering the values of a surrounding call to the same function.
1 For more detailed information about the MIPS instruction set and the SPIM environment, consult
chapter 4 of this book, and SPIM S20: A MIPS R2000 Simulator by James Larus. Other
references include Computer Organization and Design, by David Patterson and John Hennessy
(which includes an expanded version of James Larus’ SPIM documentation as appendix A), and
MIPS R2000 RISC Architecture by Gerry Kane.
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