Chips › Graphics & video › Console graphics › SNES PPU
SNES PPU
1990
The Super Nintendo's picture processing units, drawing layered tiled backgrounds, Mode 7 rotation and 128 sprites.
Machines
Emulators
| Emulator | Type | License | Site |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mesen | downloadable | GPL-3.0 | Website ↗ |
| Mesen2 | downloadable | GPL-3.0 | Website ↗ |
| NESbox | online | MIT | Website ↗ |
| SNES (LakeSnes) | online | MIT | Website ↗ |
| Snes9x | downloadable | Non-commercial | Website ↗ |
| ZSNES | downloadable | GPL-2.0 | Website ↗ |
| ares | downloadable | ISC | Website ↗ |
| bsnes | downloadable | GPL-3.0 | Website ↗ |
| higan | downloadable | GPL-3.0 | Website ↗ |
| nemulator | downloadable | Freeware | Website ↗ |
| no$sns | downloadable | Freeware | Website ↗ |
Reference & documentation
External technical references for programming SNES PPU and for writing emulators.
| Resource | Type | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Fullsnes - Nocash SNES Specs ↗ | Datasheet | Exhaustive SPC700/S-DSP hardware, ports, timing reference |
| Tiles - SNESdev Wiki ↗ | Format | Bitplane tile encoding for all bpp modes |
| Graphics Format - SnesLab ↗ | Format | Interleaved bitplane storage per color depth |
| Registers - Super Famicom Development Wiki ↗ | Memory map | Full memory-mapped register map with access timing |
| SNES: Sprites and backgrounds rendering ↗ | Programming | How PPU prefetch and line buffers work |
| Backgrounds, modes and tests - emudev ↗ | Programming | Implementing PPU background rendering against test ROMs |
| SNES Graphics Data - Bumbershoot Software ↗ | Programming | Encoding tiles and tilemaps with code |
| PPU Registers - SNESdev Wiki ↗ | Reference | All $2100-$213F PPU registers with bitfields |
| Qwertie's SNES Documentation ↗ | Reference | Detailed PPU graphics, registers, Mode 7, HDMA |
| SNES PPU Schematics - NESdev Forum ↗ | Schematic | Redrawn PPU1/PPU2 schematics and pixel bus |
| Emulator tests - SNESdev Wiki ↗ | Test suite | PPU conformance test ROMs for accuracy |