I Built a Simple MIPS CPU Simulator in Python 🧠

Why I Built It

In the Computer Architecture module within the Computer Science course, I learned the fundamental concepts of registers, memory, and instructions that explain how a CPU works. As part of the CS104 project, I decided to put that theory into practice by building a small MIPS-style CPU simulator in Python, which allowed me to observe step by step how instructions are executed and directly connect what I learned in class with hands-on experimentation.

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What the Program Does

The simulator models a very small CPU with:

• Registers
• Main memory
• A program counter (PC)
• A fetch–decode–execute loop

It supports basic MIPS-like instructions such as:

ADD, ADDI, LW, SW, BEQ, and HALT

Instructions are loaded from a text file and executed one by one, printing register states after each step.

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Demo

Seeing the registers update after each instruction makes the CPU behavior easy to follow.

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How It’s Built (Brief)

The project is written in Python and organized into:

• A CPU class to handle instruction execution
• A Memory class to simulate main memory
• A simple instruction parsers

The code is heavily commented and designed for clarity rather than performance.

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Source Code

🔗 GitHub Repository:

👉 https://github.com/thecoder507/cpu_simulator_python

(Full explanation and documentation are available in the README.)