You will need this if you plan to use the Simplescalar compiler tools we are providing. We are using pre-compiled binaries and libraries for the Simplescalar compiler.
(But why don't you recompile the toolchain for a linux or windows machine? I did this long time ago and it is a non-trivial task. Moreover, given that it is fairly old and it is unlikely it will successfully recompile. EVen back then, the toolchain would not recompile with the then most recent gcc version. Library dependencies also complicate things further.)
Go to www.cygwin.com and go to their install page. Make sure you use the 32b setup. It will download a setup_x86.exe file, run it, and go through the steps. Uwaterloo has a mirror which is pretty fast for us (before getting the list of packages there may be two warning for files missing, ignore them). Once the package menu comes up, make sure you open the Devel submenu and include the following packages (this is if you wish to do the full assignment on a windows machine):
Devel:
Once the setup finishes. You can go to C:\cygwin where you will find a Cygwin.bat file. This launches a terminal which runs on top of the cygwin environment. Your are done. You should be able to find help on the web if things go wrong. Welcome to the world of software developers.