The MIPS architecture has several variants that differ in various ways (e.g., the MIPS64 architecture supports 64-bit integers and addresses), which means that spim will not run programs compiled for all MIPS processors. MIPS compilers also generate a number of assembler directives that spim cannot process. These directives usually can be

MIPS Instruction Reference. This is a description of the MIPS instruction set, their meanings, syntax, semantics, and bit encodings. The syntax given for each instruction refers to the assembly language syntax supported by the MIPS assembler. MIPS is a computer architecture. Two classic books on MIPS, Gerry Kane and Joe Heinrich's MIPS RISC Architecture and Dominic Sweetman's See MIPS Run supports this. Further more, the vendors themselves, MIPS Technologies and Imagination Technologies have always consistently referred to MIPS as an architecture. Introduction to the MIPS Architecture January 14-16, 2013 1/24. Unof?cial textbook MIPS Assembly Language Programming by Robert Britton A beta version of this book (2003) is available free online 2/24. Exercise 1 clari?cation MIPS64™ Architecture For Programmers Volume II, Revision 0.95 1 Chapter 1 About This Book The MIPS64™ Architecture For Programmers Volume II comes as a multi-volume set. • Volume I describes conventions used throughout the document set, and provides an introduction to the MIPS64™ Architecture this purpose on the last page of this manual. MIPS Assembly Language Programmer's Guide • MIPS RISC Architecture • MIPS RISC/os Programmer's Reference Manual (ROS-01-DOC) • MIPS RISC/os User's Reference Manual (ROS-02-DOC) About This Book vi Assembly Language Programmer's MIPS instruction set MIPS originally an acronym for Microprocessor without Interlocked Pipeline Stages is a reduced instruction set computer RISC instruction set architecture ISA developed by MIPS 2.0 MIPS Architecture Overview This chapter presents a basic, general overview of the architectu