The Traditional Example

You are now ready to see the program you probably expected to see in Chapter One. The following program prints the string, then calls the exit service.

# hello.asm
#
        .text
        .globl  main
main:
        li      $v0,4       # code 4 == print string
        la      $a0,string  # $a0 == address of the string
        syscall             # Invoke the operating system.

        li      $v0,10      # code 10 == exit
        syscall             # Return to OS.

        .data
string: .asciiz      "Hello SPIM!\n"
# end of file

The string is printed to the monitor window of the simulator. The program is complete, and can be copied into a source file and run as is. But see the next page first.