MIPS Jupyter Kernel

This kernel uses python3 to interface with the MIPS assembly interpreter SPIM from a Jupyter notebook.

Setup:

• Install the MIPS interpreter SPIM with sudo apt-get install spim.

• Install Jupyter Lab with pip install jupyterlab, or the package manager of your choice (pip3, conda, etc.).

• Navigate to the kernel folder in this repository and run ./install_kernel.sh (you may need to add permissions) to generate a kernel spec file and folder.

• From /kernel, run jupyter lab (or notebook) and select the MIPS kernel option to open a new MIPS notebook using the provided kernel module.

Usage:

Running code:

• Execute MIPS code by running code cells. Output will be displayed under the cell.

• User input is also taken under the cell.

Debugging:

Syntax and labeling errors will be shown after code cell execution. The first and last line of a cell can contain commands to assist debugging, run before and/or after execution respectively:

• #!RESET will reinitialize the MIPS interpreter to start a new session with clean registers and memory. For example, you may wish to include this at the top of each cell that precedes a new program.

• #!AUTO will scan your code cell for register references and show the contents of the detected registers.

• #!ALL will show the contents of every register available.

• #!SYM will show the names and addresses of all global labels.

• #!$reg, reg, ... will show the contents of given registers. For example: #!$v0, $a0, $ra will show registers v0, a0, and ra.

• #!0xaddress, ... will show the contents of a given memory address. For example: #!0x00400024 will show what instruction is in that address.

These commands can be combined (as in #!AUTO, SYM, RESET) and will be executed in the stated order.

Examples can be seen in the test.ipynb notebook file here (relative link).