MIPS Assembly code

I've been handed an assignment that looks like this and I have no fucking clue how to even get started, it involves taking in a string and determining if it's the longest palindrome. Couldn't find anything else helpful online so thought I might as well come here.

To practice MIPS calling conventions, you must implement 3 functions called “get_to_end” “get_longest,” and  “is_ palindrome:”

•    get_to_end (30 points): It accepts one argument stored in $a0 which is the starting address of a string. It should return two values. In $v0, it should return the address of the last character of the string. In $v1 it should return the number of characters in this string. 
 
•    is_ palindrome (40 points): It accepts one argument stored in $a0, which is the starting address of a string. It should return two values. In $v0, it should return 0 if the string is not a palindrome, and 1 if it is a palindrome. In $v1 it should return the number of characters in this string. Inside it must call “get_to_end” (because obviously it is useful).

•    get_longest (30 points): It accepts two arguments stored in $a0, and $a1, respectively. $a0 is the starting address of an array of 32-bit numbers; $a1 is the number of elements in this array. Each element in this array is the starting address of a string (which may or may not be a palindrome). It should return one value in $v0 which is the starting address of the longest palindrome in the array. Inside it must call “is_ palindrome” for obvious reasons. It should not all “get_to_end.”

>>5
ARM
dead platform

HAHAHA No. ARM is strong-arming there way into the future. 64-bit ARM and quad-core and oct-core 2GHZ ARM SoCs have been announced.

ARM is fucking fantastic. It has a very relaxed cache coherency model, much better than x86/x86-64's shitty implicit acquire/release fence model, so ARM has better prospects for scalability in a shared memory systems.

Also, http://pandaboard.org/ dual-core ARM Cortex A9 MPcore SoC dev board with PowerVR SGX540, display port and HDMI out, 1GB of RAM, runs Linux for $179.

By 2020, I guarantee you every average person will have one or more ARM enabled devices, even in the developing world (which will be much closer to the first-world in wealth and technology in another decade).

Also, ARM assembly is nice to work with. It's RISC, and has nice stuff for atomic operations and floating-point SIMD. Also, if you have to ever work with the DMA controller, it's a breeze compared to x86-land DMA.

Windows 8 will have a general-purpose ARM desktop/laptop distribution. The fact that Microsoft has finally caved in after all of these years just shows that they know ARM is going to become much more important in the near future. Ignoring ARM now is suicide.