Cemu is a cross-platform game console emulator designed to replicate the Nintendo Wii U hardware environment. It provides a software simulation layer that allows original Wii U games and homebrew applications to run on Windows, Linux, and macOS.
The project translates guest machine code and graphics API calls into host instructions and modern shaders to enable hardware acceleration. It utilizes a dynamic recompilation engine and a host-API graphics backend to interface with Vulkan or OpenGL.
The system manages hardware simulation through multi-threaded CPU emulation, memory-mapped I/O simulation, and a virtual file system that abstracts guest disk images and archives.