Mythril is a deterministic simulation kernel designed to model time and execution order explicitly.
Its purpose is to provide a truthful, reproducible foundation for hardware simulation—where correctness, ordering, and timing are enforced by construction rather than approximated by convention.
Mythril does not emulate any specific system. It defines the rules of simulated reality.
Mythril owns simulated time.
Time advances only when explicitly authorized by the kernel. There is no dependence on wall-clock time, operating system scheduling, frame pacing, or implicit batching.
A kernel tick represents one indivisible advancement of simulated time. Any relationship between ticks and hardware-specific units (cycles, dots, samples) is defined externally by the systems being modeled.
Execution order is deterministic and observable.
Components are stepped in a stable, explicitly defined order. This ordering is a semantic property of the simulation and is treated as part of time itself, not as an implementation detail.
This enables correct modeling of:
- bus contention
- interrupt visibility
- race-like hardware effects
- link cable and signal timing
Given the same inputs, Mythril produces the same behavior—bit-for-bit, run after run.
This guarantees:
- reproducible execution
- deterministic replay
- reliable debugging
- consistent network synchronization
Mythril is not:
- an emulator
- a scheduler
- a framework
- a frontend
- a timing convenience layer
It has no knowledge of:
- systems
- CPUs
- frames
- games
- cores
- performance modes
Policy does not belong in the kernel.
Mythril is designed to support hardware-faithful interaction beyond a single machine.
This includes, but is not limited to:
- link cable–style communication
- online connectivity modeled as physical I/O with latency
- deterministic synchronization across machines
- interaction with real hardware and cartridges
Networking is treated as hardware behavior, not as state synchronization.
Mythril is intentionally minimal.
Current focus is on:
- correctness of time ownership
- deterministic execution order
- strict lifecycle semantics
- long-term architectural stability
Features such as diagnostics, tracing, and tooling may be added later, but core semantics are designed to remain stable.
If a simulation lies about time, it has already failed.
Mythril exists to ensure that simulated hardware can participate in the world as if it were real hardware itself.