The MPS Computer System Simulator

The software simulation of a computer system grants better control and understanding of its inner workings, both for teaching and for research purposes. We started using emulators made from other universities for teaching purposes several years ago, and now we have built our own general-purpose hardware emulator. MPS is a computer system simulator based on MIPS R3000 processor. RAM, ROM, processor, disks, tapes, printer and terminal devices are emulated to the slightest detail and fully configurable; permanent memory units (disks, tapes) may be retained between simulations. MPS features a complete graphic user interface running under X Window, documentation and freely-available sources. We also developed TINA and AMIKE, two experimental projects on operating system development; we will discuss them here, together with several other project proposals.