The Super FX is a coprocessor on the Graphics Support Unit added to select
Super Nintendo video game cartridges, primarily to provide advanced 2D and 3D
techniques. The Super FX chip was designed by Argonaut Games, who also
co-developed the 3D space scrolling shooter video game Star Fox to
demonstrate the additional polygon rendering capabilities that the chip had
introduced to the SNES. Overview
While in development, the Super FX chip was codenamed "Super Mario FX" and
"MARIO", which is an acronym for "Mathematical, Argonaut, Rotation &
Input/Output", where "MARIO" is printed on the face of the final production
chip. With the release of Star Fox in 1993, the Super FX became the best
selling RISC-based processor at that time.
The chip is used to render 3D polygons and to assist the SNES in rendering
advanced 2D effects. This custom-made RISC processor is typically programmed
to act like a graphics accelerator chip that draws polygons to a frame buffer in
the RAM that sits adjacent to it. The data in this frame buffer is
periodically transferred to the main video memory inside of the console using
DMA in order to show up on the television display.
Star Fox uses the chip for simple polygon rendering. Where the polygons in
Star Fox number in the hundreds, even simple modern games use millions. Star
Fox uses scaled bitmaps for lasers, asteroids, and other obstacles, but
other objects such as ships are rendered with polygons. Super Mario World 2:
Yoshi's Island uses the chip for advanced graphics effects like sprite
scaling and stretching, for huge sprites that allowed for boss characters to take
up the whole screen, and for multiple foreground and background parallax
layers to give a greater illusion of depth.
The first version of the chip, commonly referred to as simply "Super FX", is
clocked with a 21.4 MHz signal, but an internal clock speed divider halves it
to 10.7 MHz. Later on, the design was revised to become the Super FX GSU;
this, unlike the first Super FX chip revision, is able to reach 21 MHz.
All versions of the Super FX chip are functionally compatible in terms of
their instruction set. The differences arise in how they are packaged, their
pinout, and their internal clock speed. As a result of changing the package when
creating the GSU-2, more external pins were available and assigned for
addressing. As a result, a larger amount of external ROM or RAM can be accessed.
Game cartridges that contain a Super FX chip have additional contacts at the
bottom of the cartridge that connect to the extra slots in the cartridge port
that are not otherwise typically used. Therefore, Super FX games can not be
plugged into cartridge adapters which predate the release of Super FX games.
This includes cheat devices, such as the Game Genie.
Because of higher manufacturing costs and increased development time, few
Super FX based games were made compared the rest of the SNES library. Due to
these increased costs, SuperFX games often retailed at a higher MSRP compared
to other SNES games. List of games
See also List of Super NES enhancement chips
DSP, another series of chips embedded in some game cartridges that boost the
SNES's math and graphics capabilities Cx4 chip, an SNES cartridge chip for
Capcom games. Nintendo SA-1
b:Super NES Programming/Super FX tutorial
ARC International - continued development Super FX processor
technology ARC
References External links
Nintendo Land Tech Page at the Wayback Machine