Because of the limited lifespan in terms of re-writing of all those devices (embedded flash memory in the µCs as well as external) the better way for long-term use is to only once write code on them, and relying on memcards/SD cards for ease of updating and change when defective.
It is pointless to want to boot SWISS straight from a chip, while you will surely be using SD cards for ISOs anyways.
The Wii can boot SWISS alone, so there will probably not be any developpement around its chips anymore.
In terms of size, you have three options, from smaller to bigger:
memcard code forwarder (as contained in the save exploits), probably less than 24kB.
SD card code forwarder (as contained in the DoLaunchers, boot.gci), currently more than 128kB with SD2SP2 and ExFat support.
SWISS.dol, almost 3MB uncompressed.
The infectus modchip you mention shows 512kB of flash memory, it's written on the chip, but how much would be really available for the GC-specific code?
Undead Sega wrote: ↑Mon Apr 26, 2021 1:44 am
…you say current and past chips to have the sufficient memory to hold the ever growing Swiss…
That's misunderstanding what I wrote.
![Razz :P](./images/smilies/icon_razz.gif)
What I say was possible at last is loading the minimal code needed to find and load Boot.GCI on one of the memcards.
We have to start from scratch, writing by hand straight in machine code as the compilers just generate useless crap, with the code for finding Boot.gci on slotA memcard, and loading it. That's the smaller, smarter we can do, to begin with.