Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas
Mindstorms: children, computers, and powerful ideas
Combining learning strategies and tools in a first course in computer architecture
WCAE '03 Proceedings of the 2003 workshop on Computer architecture education: Held in conjunction with the 30th International Symposium on Computer Architecture
A MIPS assembly language simulator designed for education
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
MARS: an education-oriented MIPS assembly language simulator
Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
GSPIM: graphical visualization tool for MIPS assembly programming and simulation
Proceedings of the 37th SIGCSE technical symposium on Computer science education
Teaching assembly language with a taste of hardware
Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges
Frances: A Tool for Understanding Computer Architecture and Assembly Language
ACM Transactions on Computing Education (TOCE)
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This paper describes SPIMbot, an extension to James Larus's widely-used MIPS simulator SPIM, that allows virtual robots to be controlled by writing programs in the MIPS assembly language. SPIMbot was written to provide an engaging environment to motivate students to learn assembly language concepts. The SPIMbot tool allows the development of scenarios---in which students must program the robot to perform certain tasks---and provides the means to compete two robots against each other.In our sophomore/junior-level class, we structure the programming component as a collection of structured assignments that produce sub-components for the robot; these sub-components are then used in a final open-ended programming assignment to produce an entry for a SPIMbot tournament. In our experience, this has been an effective means of engaging students, with many students investing time to aggressively optimize their implementations. SPIMbot has been effectively used in large classes and its source code is freely available [7].