Apple Silicon Platform Subsystems

These pages detail the specifics of a particular platform subsystem. They are loosely categorised by function.

Generalised overviews¶

• Introduction to Apple Silicon
• Accelerator Engines

Coprocessors and accelerators¶

• AGX - Apple's PowerVR-derived tile-based deferred renderer
• SEP - The Secure Enclave, Apple's crypto/biometrics/security engine

Platform control logic¶

• AIC - Apple Interrupt Controller
• WDT - Watchdog Timer
• SMC - System Management Controller
• ASC - Apple's Mailbox-like firmware interface

Platform initialisation and boot¶

• Boot
• MachO Boot Protocol
• Memory Map
• SMP spinup
• ADT (Apple Device Tree)
• NVRAM

Application processors¶

• ARM System Registers
• SPRR and GXF
• CPU Debug Registers
• Apple Instructions

I/O¶

• APCIe (Apple PCIe controller)
• GPIO
• USB Debug
• USB PD
• Stock Partition Layout

Peripherals¶

• Camera - Broadcom camera and ISP