MIPS vs ARMv8 - muneeb-mbytes/computerArchitectureCourse GitHub Wiki

MIPS vs ARMv8

Design Philosophy

  • MIPS: Adheres to the RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer) design philosophy, focusing on simplicity and efficiency with a small, highly optimized set of instructions.
  • ARMv8: Also follows the RISC philosophy but includes enhancements for performance, power efficiency, and scalability. ARMv8 introduces a 64-bit architecture (AArch64) alongside the 32-bit architecture (AArch32).

Instruction Set and Registers

  • MIPS:
    1. Fixed 32-bit instruction width.
    2. 32 general-purpose registers, with one register (usually $zero) hardwired to 0.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Supports both 32-bit (A32 and T32/Thumb) and 64-bit (A64) instruction sets.
    2. In AArch64 mode, it has 31 general-purpose registers plus a zero register (XZR) and a stack pointer (SP).

Memory Access

  • MIPS:
    1. Load/store architecture where memory is accessed only via explicit load and store instructions.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Load/store architecture with support for more complex addressing modes and operations directly on memory. ARMv8 also supports load/store multiple instructions for efficient memory operations.

Branching and Conditional Execution

  • MIPS:
    1. Relies on comparison instructions that set a register to 0 or 1 based on the result, followed by a conditional branch instruction.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Includes a rich set of conditional execution features, including conditional instructions that can be executed based on the status of the condition flags in the PSTATE register.

Instruction Set Complexity

  • MIPS:
    1. Smaller and simpler instruction set.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Larger and more complex instruction set due to various extensions (e.g., NEON for SIMD, Cryptography extensions, and SVE for scalable vector extensions).

Power Consumption

  • MIPS:
    1. Generally efficient but less emphasis on low power consumption compared to ARM.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Strong focus on power efficiency, making it popular in mobile and embedded devices. ARMv8 introduces new power management features and optimizations for energy efficiency.

Performance

  • MIPS:
    1. Historically known for simplicity and speed, but modern implementations lag behind ARMv8 in performance due to fewer optimizations and enhancements.
  • ARMv8:
    1. High performance with continuous improvements, making it competitive in both high-performance computing and low-power devices.

Industry Usage

  • MIPS:
    1. Used in specific niches such as networking equipment, older gaming consoles, and some embedded systems.
  • ARMv8:
    1. Dominant in mobile devices, widely used in embedded systems, servers, and even high-performance computing. ARMv8's 64-bit support has made it popular in data centers and for applications requiring more memory and processing power.