MAL vs. TAL

TAL is the true assembly language of the MIPS RISC processor. Each TAL instruction corresponds to a single machine code instruction. The TAL instruction set defines the MIPS RISC architecture using symbolic notation. The machine code instructions are 32 bit binary words.

MAL is a programming language abstraction which hides details of the MIPS RISC architecture. Many MAL instructions are identical to TAL, but some MAL instructions require 2 or 3 TAL instructions.

The process of translating MAL into machine code is called assembly. The first step in assembling a MAL program is translation to TAL. The program which performs the assembly language translation is the assembler. A smart assembler is required to synthesize MAL instructions from 2 or more TAL instructions.