Ian Sutton
CSE 381
Fall 2014

Project 1 - MIPS Matrix Multiplier

	My approach to this project was to use my existing skills with
relatively higher-architecture operating system/kernel to better
understand the relatively lower-level CPU operations: 'top-down' rather
than 'bottom-up'. I started by writing an equivalent program in C along
with a makefile that specifies a compilation routine that results in a
rather unoptimized binary, important for later reasons. I compiled on an
intel i386 single-core 32-bit pentium chip (on an old thinkpad) in order
to get the least complicated instructions. I stripped the ELF
headers/footers and translated the sequence of opcodes into readable x86
ASM. 

This is where I started to get a feel for how this program was working
on the instruction level. I then changed the compilation options to
instead cross-compile and target an older Longsoon 32-bit MIPS platform,
suitable for this course. After adjusting the optimization settings, I
was able to come up with an instruction file suitable for this
assignment (specifically, it did not use any MIPS64, multithreaded, or
pseudo-instructions prohibited by the handout). I then ran it through
MARS to guarantee operability on the professor's end.