MIPS is an architecture which is based on the open-source architecture RISC-V. RISC-V is popular in education for learning assembly as it is royalty-free and generalized. MIPS is its own instruction set that isn't supported by CPUs. In order to run MIPS, you will need an interpreter.
A common solution is to use MARS, developed by Missouri State University, which is an IDE and interpreter for MIPS. A caveat of MARS is that it hasn't been updated in over a decade. Some developers might opt to use a more modern IDE like VS Code, and this guide is for that audience.
- Install VS Code.
- Install the Better MIPS Support extension in the VS Code Marketplace. This enables syntax