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And supposedly Thumb mode was designed at the request of Nintendo, for use in the Game Boy Advance. (I think I read this in one of the Acorn oral histories, mad
by pdw 6y ago
And supposedly Thumb mode was designed at the request of Nintendo, for use in the Game Boy Advance. (I think I read this in one of the Acorn oral histories, maddeningly I can't find a source now.)
- gok 6y agoHm that would be rather surprising. GBA was released in 2001; Thumb was introduced in 1994 with ARM7.
- klelatti 6y agoSurprising but true! Dave Jaggar makes it clear in this video that it was to keep code within smaller Nintendo ROM size constraints. Seven year gap between ARM / Nintendo discussions and GBA appearance! https://youtu.be/_6sh097Dk5k?t=1657 https://youtu.be/_6sh097Dk5k?t=1657
- pdw 6y agoHe mentions only Nintendo, I must have been mistaken about the GBA. Given the year, this must have been for the Virtual Boy. Not a surprise that they don't tell the story much. In the end the Virtual Boy shipped with a 32-bit NEC CPU.
- klelatti 6y agoPossibly, but the Virtual Boy was announced in Nov 1994 and demoed at the start of 1995 - so a very short period for development if they were still debating the processor during 1994. Maybe Nintendo were concerned about code size given their experience with VB and that led to the challenge to the ARM team? Plus seems like the GBA was paused for a while in the 1990s too.