The classic 1995 first-person shooterDoomhas a special place in many people’s hearts. For decades, individuals have been pushing the boundaries of what they can get Doom to run on, whether it’s apiano, aPDF file, orWindow’s Task Manager. Recently, someone posed the question, “Can it run Doom?” to one of Apple’s AV cables.
A programmer named Nayan Satan recently posted a video onYouTubeshowing off Doom running on Apple’s $50Lightning-to-HDMI Adapter. The game looks like it plays surprisingly well and is playable despite a few minor hiccups. you’re able to check out the video below.
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How does Doom run on a cable?
Apple’s Lightning to HDMI Adapter has an SoC inside it
After watching the video, you might wonder how a game runs on a cable. The answer is that the cable itself has an SoC (System on a Chip).Apple’s Lightning connectiondoesn’t have the bandwidth to transmit an HDMI signal, so the low-power SoC on the cable sends the video over the Lightning connection and decompresses it into a raw HDMI signal.
Like any of Apple’s other devices, the SoC on the chip is locked down tight, so the programmer’s most challenging job was gaining access to it. The chip runs a “stripped-down” version of iOS, which allows them to run Doom. AMacBookis seen in the video, but it appears to be running code onto the adapter to get it to work. The programmer admits there is “still work to be done,” but their progress is impressive so far.
It’s funny to think that something as simple as a Lightning-to-HDMI cable has more computing power than a computer from 1995. The cable’s SOC is reportedly from Samsung and is an ARM Cortex-A5 clocked at 400Mhz. So, can Apple’s HDMI-to-Lightning adapterrun Doom? The answer is a resounding yes. If you want a nice throwback, in 2013, Pocket-lint tried out playingDoom on a piano.
Doom Piano hands-on video: We play Doom. On a piano
