Gamecube hardware acronyms. Version 1.3. (2 Feb 2007) ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ AA Antialiasing. Rendering method, that makes polygon edges seem less sharpen, by combining colors of nearby pixels. AD16 Mysterious EXI device. AI Audio Interface. Hardware responsible for DMA playback of PCM buffer and DVD ADPCM streaming sound. AI hardware cannot mix sound channels or set channel volume for PCM DMA playback. These operations and more advanced sound effects are produced by DSP. Apploader Small program on DVD to load main DOL executable. AR, ARAM Auxiliary (Audio) Memory. 16 MB of slow (comapred to RAM) DRAM. Used for raw DSP sound data and as temporary space for textures. ARAM has DMA communication channel with main memory (RAM). Development boards has "ARAM Expansion" (additional 4, 16 or 32 MBs). BAT Block Address Translation, PPC MMU translation mechanism. There are DBAT and IBAT special-purpose registers for data and instruction address translation respectively. BBA Broad-Band Adapter, GC's 10BaseT Ethernet Adapter. BS Bootstrap Stage (from analogy with UNIX). Very first code, executed after GC hard reset. BS2 Bootstrap Stage 2. Same as IPL. CR PPC Condition Register, stores result of integer comare operation, for conditional branch decision. CRT C Run Time. C/C++ program environment (libraries and startup calls). DOL Gamecube application (custom executable file format). Dolphin Early development work name of Gamecube. Dolphin OS Gamecube OS. Single user, single process, multithreaded. Linked together with any GC application ("hard-linked"), as library. DSP Digital Signal Processor. Used to produce advanced sound on GC. DSP is integrated with GP in Flipper chip and has its own ROM. Developed by Macronix. DI, DVD DVD hardware interface. GC DVD is actually microcontroller, based on MN-10200 CPU with proprietary firmware ROM. DVD is protected by non-standard barcodes and data encryption, which is decrypted on-the-fly by DVD controller. GC DVD cannot be read on usual PC hardware. Whole GC DVD stuff is developed by Matsushita. EFB Embedded Framebuffer. 2MB of fast 1T-SRAM memory located inside Flipper. Used by GP's pixel engine to draw pixels. Later copied into XFB, for final TV-output. EXI Expansion Interface. Gamecube peripherial devices bus, sort of USB architecture. Developed by Macronix. Devices drived by EXI: memory cards, broad-band adapter, real-time clock, bootrom, SRAM. FIFO First-In-First-Out buffer to send GP commands and create GP command lists. Flipper Gamecube Northbridge+Peripheral Hardware+Graphics Processor+Audio DSP. FPR Floating Point Register. Gekko has 32 64-bit FPRs, named f0-f31. FPSCR Floating Point Status and Control Register. JTAG Hardware debug interface to CPU. You can connect some wires to CPU pins, to overwhelm it. Gekko has full support of IEEE 1149-1a-1993 JTAG standard (discussed). GC, GCN, NGC Nintendo Gamecube. GCM Gamecube Master Data (official term). GC DVD Image files. Gekko Gamecube CPU, PowerPC 750-derivative processor with FPU extensions, called "Paired Single". GP, GX Graphics Processor, the major part of Flipper chip. GP is fixed point state-machine. Developed by ArtX team. GPR General Purpose Register. Gekko has 32 32-bit GPRs, named r0-r31. r1 often used as stack pointer (sp). GX Software library, developed by Nintendo and ArtX, to drive GP hardware. Has many crossways with OpenGL (but more advanced). HW2 Common name of GC hardware. Number states for revision ("2" for production boards, "1" for first development hardware). IPL Initial Program Loader. Graphics shell, used to load game from DVD. MC Memory Card, EXI device. MI Flipper memory interface, plays role of "Nothbridge". MMU PPC Memory Management Unit. Translates virtual address to physical. MMU has two translation mechanisms: block address translation and page table translation. Address translation for data access and instruction fetch is processed separately in DMMU and IMMU. MSR Machine State Register. CPU status and control register. MX Macronix Ltd. chips index. GC has many hardware parts, developed by Macronix, like DSP, EXI and bootrom chip. PC Program Counter. PowerPC architecture does not define such term, but everyone is using it anyway, instead "CIA" (Current Instruction Address). PCM Pulse Code Modulation, method commonly used in digital sound hardware. PCM sound parameters are: playback rate, bits per sample, sample format. GC AI can playback 32000/48000 Hz, 16-bit big-endian stereo samples via DMA. PI Peripheral Interface. Set of hardware registers to control interrupts and hardware reset. There also "PI FIFO": hardware-driven FIFO buffer in RAM. PM PowerPC Performance Monitor. Set of PPC special purpose registers used for speed profiling of applications. PPC IBM PowerPC Architecture. PTE Page Table Entry. Page table record, used to translate virtual address to physical. RAM Main memory. GC has 24 MB of fast 1T-SRAM. Development boards has RAM extended up to 48 MB. Developed by MoSys. ROM Read-only memory. GC has following ROMs: 2 MB encrypted bootrom, 128 KB DVD firmware, 4 KB DSP DROM, 8 KB DSP IROM. RSW "Reset Switch", same as reset button. Seems early development GC models were equipped by switch, insted programmable reset button. RTC Real-time clock. EXI device, counting seconds. SDK Software Development Kit. Full set of compilers, libraries and documentation for development on specified platform. Gamecube SDK contain development tools, like sound and texture convertors, and set of libraries for OS and hardware. Compiler is provided by Metrowerk's CodeWarrior. There also huge development board and paper documentation. SI Serial Interface. Hardware responsible for communication with serial devices, such as GC controller and keyboard via serial I/O buffer. SPR Special-purpose register. Set of registers, dedicated to operating system. Gekko has about 60 SPRs. SR Segment Registers, used by MMU for virtual address translation. SRAM Small amount of battery backuped memory for OS misc settings. TLB PPC MMU Translation Lookaside Buffer, used to keep recently used page address translations. Gekko has 128 two-way set associative TLB for each MMU (DMMU and IMMU). VI Video Interface. Hardware responsible for TV-out of framebuffer (XFB), and generating VBlank interrupt (actually can be configured to interrupt CPU at any beam location). Has support for light-gun, antialiasing of XFB by tap-filters and progressive video mode (480p). WBUF Gekko Write Gather Buffer. Small cache for burst memory transactions. Used together with graphics FIFO to send GP commands. XFB External Framebuffer, located in main memory. Used for final TV-out by VI.