GPU/External Registers
This page describes the address range accessible from the ARM11, used to configure the basic GPU functionality. For information about the internal registers used for 3D rendering, see GPU/Internal Registers.
Map
| User VA | PA | Length | Name | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0x1EF00004 | 0x10400004 | 4 | ? | |
| 0x1EF00010 | 0x10400010 | 16 | Memory Fill1 "PSC0" | GX command 2 |
| 0x1EF00020 | 0x10400020 | 16 | Memory Fill2 "PSC1" | GX command 2 |
| 0x1EF00030 | 0x10400030 | 4 | ? | |
| 0x1EF00034 | 0x10400034 | 4 | GPU Busy | Bit31 = cmd-list busy, bit27 = PSC0 busy, bit26 = PSC1 busy. |
| 0x1EF00050 | 0x10400050 | 4 | ? | Writes 0x22221200 on GPU init. |
| 0x1EF00054 | 0x10400054 | 4 | ? | Writes 0xFF2 on GPU init. |
| 0x1EF000C0 | 0x104000C0 | 4 | Backlight control | Writes 0x0 to allow backlights to turn off, 0x20000000 to force them always on. |
| 0x1EF00400 | 0x10400400 | 0x100 | Framebuffer Setup "PDC0" (top screen) | |
| 0x1EF00500 | 0x10400500 | 0x100 | Framebuffer Setup "PDC1" (bottom) | |
| 0x1EF00C00 | 0x10400C00 | ? | Transfer Engine "DMA" | |
| 0x1EF01000 | 0x10401000 | 0x4 | ? | Writes 0 on GPU init and before the Command List is used |
| 0x1EF01080 | 0x10401080 | 0x4 | ? | Writes 0x12345678 on GPU init. |
| 0x1EF010C0 | 0x104010C0 | 0x4 | ? | Writes 0xFFFFFFF0 on GPU init. |
| 0x1EF010D0 | 0x104010D0 | 0x4 | ? | Writes 1 on GPU init. |
| 0x1EF014?? | 0x104014?? | 0x14 | "PPF" ? | |
| 0x1EF018E0 | 0x104018E0 | 0x14 | Command List "P3D" |
Memory Fill
| User VA | Description |
|---|---|
| 0x1EF000X0 | Buffer start physaddr >> 3 |
| 0x1EF000X4 | Buffer end physaddr >> 3 |
| 0x1EF000X8 | Fill value |
| 0x1EF000XC | Control. bit0: start/busy, bit1: finished, bit8-9: fill-width (0=16bit, 1=3=24bit, 2=32bit) |
Memory fills are used to initialize buffers in memory with a given value, similar to memset. A memory fill is triggered by setting bit0 in the control register. Doing so aborts any running memory fills on that filling unit. Upon completion, the hardware unsets bit0 and sets bit1 and fires interrupt PSC0.
These registers are used by GX SetMemoryFill.
LCD Source Framebuffer Setup
| Offset | Length | Name | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0x00 | 4 | Pixel timer (not pixel clock) | Higher values are slower, min. 0x1C1, bitmask 0xFFF |
| 0x04 | 4 | HDispStart(?) | Values 0xD1-0x1C1 inclusive are valid (except 2DS bottom screen)
min. 0xD1, bitmask 0xFFF |
| 0x08 | 4 | ? | must be >= REG#0x00 |
| 0x0C | 4 | ? | must be >= REG#0x08 |
| 0x10 | 4 | VAdjustGranule(?) or VBackPorch(?)
or VAdjust(2DS bottom screen)
(last row of pixels blitted increases by this amount; setting this to lower than 2 will kill the screen timing) |
Finetune vertical pixel offset(blur screen), 0x1C2 max = half pixel
or (2DS) offset the bottom screen (0 to kill top screen, 0x1C2 max on bottom screen) |
| 0x14 | 4 | HEndOffset(?) (poor 2DS emulation) | Moves the frame left/right(after some conditions are met)
default value is 0xCF |
| 0x18 | 4 | ??? | should be < REG#0x10 |
| 0x20 | 4 | HFrontPorch(?) | ??? the screen gets vertically offset with wrap-around
horizontal timing gets messed up |
| 0x24 | 4 | HSync timer? | |
| 0x28 | 4 | VDispStart(?) or VFrontPorch | |
| 0x30 | 4 | VTotal | Total amount of vertical scanlines |
| 0x34 | 4 | VDisp(?) | Total amonut of vertical scanlines displayed (only for top screen it seems like) |
| 0x44 | 4 | ??? | similar functionality to 0x10 |
| 0x4C | 4 | Overscan filler color | |
| 0x50 | 4 | Horizontal position counter | read-only |
| 0x54 | 4 | Horizontal scanline (HBlank) counter | read-only |
| 0x5C | 4 | ??? | low u16: framebuffer width
high u16: framebuffer height??? (seems to be unused) |
| 0x60 | 4 | ??? | low u16: timing data(?)
high u16: framebuffer total width (amount of pixels blitted regardless of framebuffer width) |
| 0x64 | 4 | ??? | low u16: unknown
high u16: framebuffer total height (amount of scanlines blitted regardless of framebuffer height) |
| 0x68 | 4 | Framebuffer A first address | For top screen, this is the left eye 3D framebuffer. |
| 0x6C | 4 | Framebuffer A second address | For top screen, this is the left eye 3D framebuffer. |
| 0x70 | 4 | Framebuffer format | Bit0-15: framebuffer format, bit16-31: unknown |
| 0x78 | 4 | Framebuffer select | Bit0: which framebuffer to display, bit1-7: unknown |
| 0x84 | 4 | Color adjustment register | Each poke changes the color blended over the screens content randomly. |
| 0x90 | 4 | Framebuffer stride | Distance in bytes between the start of two framebuffer rows (must be a multiple of 8). |
| 0x94 | 4 | Framebuffer B first address | For top screen, this is the right eye 3D framebuffer. Unused for bottom screen. |
| 0x98 | 4 | Framebuffer B second address | For top screen, this is the right eye 3D framebuffer. Unused for bottom screen. |
Framebuffer format
| Bit | Description |
|---|---|
| 2-0 | Color format |
| 3 | ? |
| 4 | Unused? |
| 5 | Enable parallax barrier (i.e. 3D). |
| 6 | 1 = main screen, 0 = sub screen. However if bit5 is set, this bit is cleared. |
| 7 | ? |
| 9-8 | Value 1 = unknown: get rid of rainbow strip on top of screen, 3 = unknown: black screen. |
| 15-10 | Unused? |
GSP module only allows the LCD stereoscopy to be enabled when bit5=1 and bit6=0 here. When GSP module updates this register, GSP module will automatically disable the stereoscopy if those bits are not set for enabling stereoscopy.
Framebuffer color formats
| Value | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | GL_RGBA8_OES |
| 1 | GL_RGB8_OES |
| 2 | GL_RGB565_OES |
| 3 | GL_RGB5_A1_OES |
| 4 | GL_RGBA4_OES |
Color components are laid out in reverse byte order, with the most significant bits used first (i.e. non-24-bit pixels are stored as a little-endian values). For instance, a raw data stream of two GL_RGB565_OES pixels looks like GGGBBBBB RRRRRGGG GGGBBBBB RRRRRGGG.
Transfer Engine
| Register address | Description |
|---|---|
| 0x1EF00C00 | Input physical address >> 3 |
| 0x1EF00C04 | Output physical address >> 3 |
| 0x1EF00C08 | DisplayTransfer output width (bits 0-15) and height (bits 16-31). |
| 0x1EF00C0C | DisplayTransfer input width and height. |
| 0x1EF00C10 | Transfer flags. (See below) |
| 0x1EF00C14 | GSP module writes value 0 here prior to writing to 0x1EF00C18, for cmd3. |
| 0x1EF00C18 | Setting bit0 starts the transfer. Upon completion, bit0 is unset and bit8 is set. |
| 0x1EF00C1C | ? |
| 0x1EF00C20 | TextureCopy total amount of data to copy, in bytes. |
| 0x1EF00C24 | TextureCopy input line width (bits 0-15) and gap (bits 16-31), in 16 byte units. |
| 0x1EF00C28 | TextureCopy output line width and gap. |
These registers are used by GX command 3 and 4. For cmd4, *0x1EF00C18 |= 1 is used instead of just writing value 1. The DisplayTransfer registers are only used if bit 3 of the flags is unset and ignored otherwise. The TextureCopy registers are likewise only used if bit 3 is set, and ignored otherwise.
Flags Register - 0x1EF00C10
| Bit | Description |
|---|---|
| 0 | When set, the framebuffer data is flipped vertically. |
| 1 | When set, the input framebuffer is treated as linear and converted to tiled in the output, converts tiled->linear when unset. |
| 2 | This bit is required when the output width is less than the input width for the hardware to properly crop the lines, otherwise the output will be mis-aligned. |
| 3 | Uses a TextureCopy mode transfer. See below for details. |
| 4 | Not writable |
| 5 | Don't perform tiled-linear conversion. Incompatible with bit 1, so only tiled-tiled transfers can be done, not linear-linear. |
| 7-6 | Not writable |
| 10-8 | Input framebuffer color format, value0 and value1 are the same as the LCD Source Framebuffer Formats (usually zero) |
| 11 | Not writable |
| 14-12 | Output framebuffer color format |
| 15 | Not writable |
| 16 | Use 32x32 block tiling mode, instead of the usual 8x8 one. Output dimensions must be multiples of 32, even if cropping with bit 2 set above. |
| 17-23 | Not writable |
| 24-25 | Scale down the input image using a box filter. 0 = No downscale, 1 = 2x1 downscale. 2 = 2x2 downscale, 3 = invalid |
| 31-26 | Not writable |
TextureCopy
When bit 3 of the control register is set, the hardware performs a TextureCopy-mode transfer. In this mode, all other bits of the control register (except for bit 2, which still needs to be set correctly) and the regular dimension registers are ignored, and no format conversions are done. Instead, it performs a raw data copy from the source to the destination, but with a configurable gap between lines. The total amount of bytes to copy is specified in the size register, and the hardware loops reading lines from the input and writing them to the output until this amount is copied. The "gap" specified in the input/output dimension register is the number of chunks to skip after each "width" chunks of the input/output, and is NOT counted towards the total size of the transfer.
By correctly calculating the input and output gap sizes it is possible to use this functionality to copy arbitrary sub-rectangles between differently-sized framebuffers or textures, which is one of its main uses over a regular no-conversion DisplayTransfer. When copying tiled textures/framebuffers it's important to remember that the contents of a tile are laid out sequentially in memory, and so this should be taken into account when calculating the transfer parameters.
Specifying invalid/junk values for the TextureCopy dimensions can result in the GPU hanging while attempting to process this TextureCopy.
Command List
| Register address | Description |
|---|---|
| 0x1EF018E0 | Buffer size in bytes >> 3 |
| 0x1EF018E8 | Buffer physical address >> 3 |
| 0x1EF018F0 | Setting bit0 to 1 enables processing GPU command execution. Upon completion, bit0 seems to be reset to 0. |
These 3 registers are used by GX command 1. This is used for GPU commands.
Framebuffers
These LCD framebuffers normally contain the last rendered frames from the GPU. The framebuffers are drawn from left-to-right, instead of top-to-bottom.(Thus the beginning of the framebuffer is drawn starting at the left side of the screen)
Both of the 3D screen left/right framebuffers are displayed regardless of the 3D slider's state, however when the 3D slider is set to "off" the 3D effect is disabled. Normally when the 3D slider's state is set to "off" the left/right framebuffer addresses are set to the same physical address. When the 3D effect is disabled and the left/right framebuffers are set to separate addresses, the LCD seems to alternate between displaying the left/right framebuffer each frame.
Init Values from nngxInitialize for Top Screen
- 0x1EF00400 = 0x1C2
- 0x1EF00404 = 0xD1
- 0x1EF00408 = 0x1C1
- 0x1EF0040C = 0x1C1
- 0x1EF00410 = 0
- 0x1EF00414 = 0xCF
- 0x1EF00418 = 0xD1
- 0x1EF0041C = 0x1C501C1
- 0x1EF00420 = 0x10000
- 0x1EF00424 = 0x19D
- 0x1EF00428 = 2
- 0x1EF0042C = 0x1C2
- 0x1EF00430 = 0x1C2
- 0x1EF00434 = 0x1C2
- 0x1EF00438 = 1
- 0x1EF0043C = 2
- 0x1EF00440 = 0x1960192
- 0x1EF00444 = 0
- 0x1EF00448 = 0
- 0x1EF0045C = 0x19000F0
- 0x1EF00460 = 0x1c100d1
- 0x1EF00464 = 0x1920002
- 0x1EF00470 = 0x80340
- 0x1EF0049C = 0
More Init Values from nngxInitialize for Top Screen
- 0x1EF00468 = 0x18300000, later changed by GSP module when updating state, framebuffer
- 0x1EF0046C = 0x18300000, later changed by GSP module when updating state, framebuffer
- 0x1EF00494 = 0x18300000
- 0x1EF00498 = 0x18300000
- 0x1EF00478 = 1, doesn't stay 1, read as 0
- 0x1EF00474 = 0x10501