Gaming Possible newb question - is vWii emulation?

[darkNiGHTS]

I tried searching for a while but couldn't find an answer. Maybe the answer is obvious but when you run Wii/GameCube games on the Wii U, is it emulation or is it able to run it natively? I see both Wii and Wii U have IBM processors and ATI/AMD GPUs.

Thanks

 

[CeeDee]

It's the Wii's hardware inside the case of the Wii U, along with Wii U's hardware. Wii and GCN are so similar that the Wii can run GC stuff even without GC hardware, so that's what Nintendon't does.

 

[darkNiGHTS]

It's the Wii's hardware inside the case of the Wii U, along with Wii U's hardware. Wii and GCN are so similar that the Wii can run GC stuff even without GC hardware, so that's what Nintendon't does.

I was aware that the Wii could natively play GameCube games - it had the GameCube 1.5 nickname for a reason.

Are you saying that there's actually extra hardware in there to make it compatible with the Wii without using emulation? From what I can tell it's done the same way GameCube was done on Wii but I can't find any real sources.

Are GameCube games still run natively then as well? That has to be different than how Wii ran GameCube games because the Wii needed the physical GameCube controller ports and memory cards to function.

Am I correct in assuming Nintendont can run GameCube games on Wii in Wii mode? Is that probably what Nintendo is doing as well?
https://github.com/FIX94/Nintendont

 

[kutteke]

Actually from what i can read. The wii Cpu has the same architecture as the wiiu and is stated to be backwards compatible. Only clockspeed is higher and it has 3 cores, also it has edram and faster/more cache. So i guess they just underclock it for wii mode.
About the gpu i'm not sure, it might have the ability to do the same work as the ngc/wii gpu.

--------------------- MERGED ---------------------------

The Wii U uses a custom multi-chip module (MCM) developed by AMD, IBM and Renesas in co-operation with Nintendo IRD and Nintendo Technology Development. The MCM combines an "Espresso" central processing unit (CPU) and a "Latte" graphics chip (GPU), as well as a SEEPROM memory chip.[75][76] The Espresso CPU, designed by IBM, consists of a PowerPC 750-based tri-core processor with 3 MB of shared L2 cache memory and clocked at approximately 1.24 GHz.[77][78][note 1] Despite belonging to the PowerPC family, the Espresso also shares some architectural concepts with the POWER7 architecture, such as the use of eDRAM cache and being manufactured at a 45 nm node.[79][80][note 2] The Latte graphics chip contains both a "GX2" GPGPU, which runs Wii U applications, and a "GX" GPU, which enables backward compatibility with Wii games. The GX2, designed by AMD, is based on the Radeon R600/R700 architecture and is clocked at approximately 550 MHz

 

[Bladexdsl]

it had the GameCube 1.5 nickname for a reason.

gamecube 1.5 alright with shitty motion controls