Frequently Asked Questions

What Is Ant?

Ant is a simple virtual machine, designed for pedagogical use. Ant provides a way for students to learn the essential lessons of computer architecture and assembly language without becoming bogged down in the confusing details and idiosyncrasies that plague real architectures.

Ant comes in two flavors: the 8-bit architecture, Ant-8, and the 32-bit architecture, Ant-32. Ant-8 is meant for CS1 and other courses that introduce assembly language and architecture; please see the guide for an overview. Ant-32 is a new version of Ant that is suitable for courses that require advanced architecture capabilities, such as operating systems courses.

Both versions of Ant come with command-line assemblers and debuggers. Ant-8 also has a graphical interface where students can edit, assemble, and debug.

How Is Ant Useful For Teaching?

Ant is useful for several reasons. It is designed to be simple enough for students to grasp easily, but complicated enough so that they can write interesting programs. Students save time and effort learning Ant's small instruction set. Instructors benefit from the provided documentation, tutorials, and lectures, which can be adapted to the instructor's style.

Who uses Ant?

Any instructor teaching a course that involves architecture or assembly can use Ant. Some people use Ant to learn about architecture on their own.

A few of the courses that use Ant currently are:

How can I get Ant?

You can download Ant by clicking on the "Releases" link to the left. Download is free; you may download Ant for evaluation, course use, or personal use. You will get both the binaries and documentation.

If you have any questions or comments about this page or Ant, please contact the Ant developers.

The ANT project was funded by NSF grant DUE-9950239 and Microsoft corporation.