Hardware/Starlet
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| This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Marcan (talk | contribs) at 12:00, 30 January 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
- arm926ejs (or similar) core.
- 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
- Code decryption and signature checking
- Disc decryption
- USB HCD
- USB Keyboard driver
- USB Ethernet driver
- WiFi
- TCP/IP
- SD card
- RSA encryption / decryption / signing / verifying / etc
- Sensor bar
- Probably handles the Audio/Video encoder I2C bus as well
Boot
Starlet is the first processor to run code in the Wii.
- Starlet boots from an internal Mask ROM, BOOT0
- BOOT0 decrypts, verifies, and runs the first few blocks of NAND, BOOT1
- 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