(10-15-2016, 12:16 PM)Kurausukun Wrote: This is just curiosity--do we want to emulate the Wii system internals/IOSes/etc. at a lower level at some point, or would it completely unavoidably murder performance and is thus not planned?
Quite frankly, and I couldn't say for sure, but I think that has to do with just how much more powerful hardware gets in the next half a decade. However even if there is a good chance of it happening, I certainly wouldn't say it was impossible to accurately emulate the Wii/IOSes low-level and retain majority, or even totality quality of performance. After all the Wii only had 88MB of RAM and a 723MHz processor, realistically (at least when it comes to the required difference in magnitudes of power between the emulated and emulating machine's raw power for things to be both near-identically accurate, and preform well) a modern 3.5-5.0GHz multi-core processor with over a dozen GBs of RAM to spare would in no way be considered lacking said magnitudes increase. Really I think it comes down to finding more efficient ways of preforming the same tasks that the Wii's processor preforms (perhaps by creating a pin-for-pin virtual CPU for the machine, in which firmware could be overwritten by replacing files/programs that preforms the same tasks as ad exist as placeholders for the BIOS/CPU[divided into a program per function, called when needed, never running in the background for efficiency]/NAND[which has already been done]/etc.. Of course this method would rely on licensing the schematics from IBM/Acorn/whoever designed the PPC chip in the Wii, and would require open-source alternatives that were both fully compatible with, and only recreating the function of the original IPs from Nintendo, which again with this part is partially done.)
TL;DR: perhaps it could be achieved using a method similar to what FreeDOS and other PC-DOS compatibles did, while it may not be an easy task; recreating the functions in a way compatible with the original, that does not necessarily directly emulate it. So, realistically as far as Dolphin being an emulator goes: no, however when it comes to the System Menu and other system oriented firmware properties, as a separate project or perhaps a sub-project of Dolphin specifically designed to achieve accurate Wii low-level replication quite possibly, but in the end even if this did work the games themselves would likely still run on the existing Dolphin framwork, with Low-Level being relegated specifically to homebrew/system functions which require it.