Hardware/Starlet
< Hardware
Jump to navigation
Jump to search
| This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Bushing (talk | contribs) at 14:27, 11 June 2008. It may differ significantly from the current revision. |
The Hollywood includes an ARM9 core, nicknamed the Starlet. This is a very interesting piece of hardware, as it basically does everything that makes a Wii different from a Gamecube.
Note: this page is incomplete. Please expand it as you see fit!
Hardware
- NEC ARM SoC. Might be this ARM946E core. See also ChipWorks.
- AES and SHA-1 hardware engines
- Boot ROM
- OTP key/hash area
Tasks
The Starlet handles at least these tasks in the Wii
- NAND access / filesystem
- DVD subsystem
- Authentication (RSA, EC, SHA1, HMAC-SHA1) and encryption/decryption (AES, RSA, EC)
- USB HCD (generic USB interface), Keyboard driver, Ethernet driver
- WiFi (both for networking and communication with Nintendo DS devices)
- TCP/IP and UDP
- SD card
- GPIO (Sensor bar, drive LED, power LED, etc)
- Audio/Video encoder (I2C) bus
Boot
Starlet is the first processor to run code in the Wii.
- Starlet boots from an internal Mask ROM, BOOT0 (about 1300 bytes of code out of 4K possible)
- BOOT0 decrypts, verifies, and runs the first few blocks of NAND, BOOT1 (up to the first 48 pages of flash)
- BOOT1 locates, loads, decrypts, verifies, and runs BOOT2
- The BOOT2 bootstrap then loads the embedded ELF file.
- BOOT2 starts the IOS.
At some point, Starlet loads code into an EXI buffer and bootstraps Broadway.
Links
More information about the Starlet:
- IOS - the OS that runs on the Starlet and handles calls from the Broadway during game execution and while in the system menu.
- ARM Binaries - the formats used for Starlet executable code
- WAD Files are used for BOOT2 and the IOS