MIPS Becomes RISC-V

Re:MIPS Becomes RISC-V by bitwize on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:13PM (#26390859)

MIPS was a nice simple ISA for CE students to learn and implement. Both ARM and RISC-V have gotchas that make them more complicated.

I suppose it will live on in that form, especially if the IP is opened up.

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Re:MIPS Becomes RISC-V by schoen on Monday March 08, 2021 @03:22PM (#26390994)

I remember CS 61C at Berkeley used to use MIPS to teach assembly language programming and a bit about computer architecture, using the original MIPS version of Patterson and Hennessy's Computer Organization and Design. Now that book is available in both MIPS and RISC-V versions, with, I've assumed, much more effort going into the RISC-V version...

I do think the simplicity of MIPS was a big plus there, including simplicity of simulating it (http://spimsimulator.sourceforge.net/). I suppose a lot of students may appreciate being taught on something that is or is about to be very widely used, even if it's more complicated in various ways -- and the fact that one of the textbook authors was a main RISC-V designer makes me assume that educational aspects are not at all neglected in the RISC-V world.

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Re:MIPS Becomes RISC-V by saagarjha on Monday March 08, 2021 @04:48PM (#26392105)

Not entirely related, but I found MARS (http://courses.missouristate.edu/KenVollmar/MARS/) to be much nicer to use than SPIM.

More on topic, though, RISC-V seems to really be designed in a way that makes it easy to teach. This is partially why I have doubts that it can be made very performant, but the focus of a prettier design over a more practical one is probably going to help it be more accessible to students.

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