Ah, that makes sense. I just remember hearing early on with SNES mini that the emu was functionally the same as the one for n3DS VC in contrast to the NES mini which had a ground up emu. Knowing NERD's Hanafuda/Boat design scheme that tracks then, even if it's not exactly Canoe on the VCs.
On the surface level they'd appear very similar for sure, but NERD had the opportunity to do a lot of work with Canoe; even beyond the obvious of figuring out Super-FX emulation. Before SNES Mini Nintendo avoided emulating the S-SMP sound chip (might have something to do with it being a Sony chip) and relied on per-game hacks to use a different audio format. SNES Mini continued doing this for some games but those that were newly emulated officially had proper sound emulation in place; and by the time SNES NSO launched they had fixed this for every game and the hacky sound solution is no more. They've done a bit more work with Canoe that we haven't see surface publicly yet, so I hope that happens eventually.
Yeah, they've got a consistant naming scheming for their emulators that gives away their origins. Their suite of emulators is named Hanafuda and the emulators made by them from the ground up are named after Hanafuda (types of games played with Hanafuda, card names, etc):
Kachikachi (Famicom) - currently used for NES Mini, NSO
Hiyoko (Game Boy) - currently used nowhere (as far as we know; the compression on the Zelda Game & Watch files is uncrackable)
Hagi (GameCube / Wii) - currently used for Super Mario 3D All-Stars (all of Sunshine; GPU and audio emulation for Galaxy)
Hachihachi (DS) - currently used for Wii U VC
Those that have been developed based on an existing emulator instead have the names of various watercrafts:
Canoe (Super Famicom) - currently used for SNES Mini, NSO (base emulator was used for Wii U / New 3DS VC)
Hovercraft (Nintendo 64) - currently used for NSO (base emulator was used for Wii U VC, Mario 64 in 3D All-Stars)
Sloop (Game Boy Advance) - currently used nowhere (we still haven't figured out which specific GBA emulator it was based on)
Obviously the only NSO emulator to not follow this is Mega Drive, as that's just M2's own Mega Drive emulator M2Engage (one they've been using for ages, even before the Mega Drive Mini most recognise it from recently).