MARS Red

MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator

Screenshot of the MARS Red IDE

MARS Red is a modern derivative of MARS (MIPS Assembler and Runtime Simulator), an education-oriented lightweight IDE for programming in the MIPS assembly language. For more information about the original MARS, see History.

The MARS Red IDE provides editing and assembling capabilities, but its real strength lies in its support for interactive debugging.

  • The program can be executed in slow motion or one instruction at a time. In addition, the program can be stepped backwards to undo instructions.
  • Registers and data in memory are shown and can be modified by hand while the program is running.
  • Execution breakpoints can easily be added or removed after assembling.