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MARS (MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator)

An IDE for MIPS Assembly Language Programming

 MARS is a lightweight interactive development environment (IDE) for programming in MIPS assembly language, intended for educational-level use with Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design.

Softpedia Free logo Feb. 2013: "MARS has been tested in the Softpedia labs using several industry-leading security solutions and found to be completely clean of adware/spyware components. ... Softpedia guarantees that MARS 4.3 is 100% FREE, which means it does not contain any form of malware, including spyware, viruses, trojans and backdoors." 

Download MARS from Softpedia (version on Softpedia may lag behind the version on this page).

Download MARS 4.5 software! (Aug. 2014)  

New for 4.0: new editor, featuring multiple files, context-sensitive input, and color-coding.

MARS features overview:

  • GUI with point-and-click control and integrated editor

  • Easily editable register and memory values, similar to a spreadsheet

  • Display values in hexadecimal or decimal

  • Command line mode for instructors to test and evaluate many programs easily

  • Floating point registers, coprocessor1 and coprocessor2. Standard tool: bit-level view and edit of 32-bit floating point registers

  • Variable-speed single-step execution

  • "Tool" utility for MIPS control of simulated devices. Standard tool: Cache performance analysis tool

  • Single-step backwards