The specs look great, will see how long it takes to get these as WROOM modules or on little dev boards; my two form factors of choice for Espressif devices. I'm also curious about the pricing, so far they've impressed me with how much more you get in successive generations at a similar price.
Espressif is on fire! And the CPU even has SIMD instructions!
RISC-V cores is a big deal for embedded systems because now compiling for SoCs is only a matter of `rustup target add riscv32imac-unknown-none-elf` instead of downloading half-broken proprietary toolchains and SDKs.
Yes, but it looks like there is no hardware floating point. The description of the CORDIC module indicates fixed-point calculations, which is consistent with the lack of any reference to floating point.
I am happy the have CAN-FD and Motor PWM module, but nowhere did I see conversion times listed for the ADC. For motor control I demand 1uS conversion time or less, and in the last year I've switched from fixed point to floating point after holding off on that switch for ~15 years.
How do I order a few samples, seem like there is a MOQ ?
Also I want to dive into hardware stuff but I'm always clueless as to what I do afterwards when this would arrive? Are you using a generic board or are you ordering and designing PCBs to hook this up to?
What are you using it for ? How do I go from a prototype to mass production via kickstarter?
This looks like the long-awaited replacement for the original ESP32. The S and C series have been relatively low performance (the S better than the C but stuck on the outgoing Xtensa architecture), the P4 is powerful but lacks wireless. This is a relatively high performance, dual core MCU with wireless; a nice default option for low volume designs where being able to copy a previous implementation is more important than saving a few cents. Just like the ESP32. Nice.
Not "just", it's (presumably) 8 dedicated pins that form an RMII interface. This is not the same 8 pins as you'll find in your 4-pair Ethernet cable, it's a separate protocol which can be connected to an Ethernet PHY transciever like a TI DP83867E [1], which is further connected to "magnetics" [2], a convenient package of 8 integrated transformers and chokes that provide the galvanic isolation feature of an Ethernet connection.
A few SoCs provide integrated PHY transceivers, but usually it's an external chip.
I've been building hobby LED art projects with WLED (exclusively built on the ESP32 platform). It's been a blast. These little boards are so powerful and the open source community continues to amaze me.
My preferred controller platform is of the QuinLED line - comes with power distribution, voltage regulators, fat copper lines, configurable data-line resistors, and smart auxiliary hardware support all for an affordable $30-$50 per controller. (quinled.info)
<https://kno.wled.ge/> - WLED homepage and probably my favorite clever URL of all time.
Low latency in Bluetooth audio comes down to codecs and the best are proprietary.
If you want to really cut down latency and need wireless with hardware like this, you could use a second ESP32 and send your own bitstream between them.
Is there any reason you want wireless? Bluetooth audio is a disaster, AFAIK. You don't want to use it for music. Just go wired, the ether is too cramped already.
And even if you don't need WiFi + BLE for a particular project, you may need it for other projects, and it might have value for you to standardise on one ecosystem.
Theoretically, yeah. Though at 320Mhz, with only 2.4ghz wireless, even with two cores, I doubt it's going to get anywhere near the throughput to fill the gigabit connection.
The specs look great, will see how long it takes to get these as WROOM modules or on little dev boards; my two form factors of choice for Espressif devices. I'm also curious about the pricing, so far they've impressed me with how much more you get in successive generations at a similar price.
If you're excited about the (relatively) speedy RISC-V cores and SIMD, look at the P4 which is available now. It has a slightly faster clock but no wireless: https://products.espressif.com/#/product-comparison?names=ES...
There's some cool work out there using the dsp functionality and built in image handling to crunch a lot of pixel data, which should work similarly on the S31: https://www.reddit.com/r/WLED/comments/1ry2jd7/wledmmp4_with...
Espressif is on fire! And the CPU even has SIMD instructions!
RISC-V cores is a big deal for embedded systems because now compiling for SoCs is only a matter of `rustup target add riscv32imac-unknown-none-elf` instead of downloading half-broken proprietary toolchains and SDKs.
Take a look at https://kerkour.com/introduction-to-embedded-development-wit... and https://kerkour.com/rust-esp32-pentest to get started with modern (Rust ;) embedded development.
>> And the CPU even has SIMD instructions!
Yes, but it looks like there is no hardware floating point. The description of the CORDIC module indicates fixed-point calculations, which is consistent with the lack of any reference to floating point.
I am happy the have CAN-FD and Motor PWM module, but nowhere did I see conversion times listed for the ADC. For motor control I demand 1uS conversion time or less, and in the last year I've switched from fixed point to floating point after holding off on that switch for ~15 years.
From the ESP32-S31 datasheet: "Single-precision floating-point unit (FPU) per core"
where did you find cordic mention?
Nice. Been meaning to try rust on these sort of devices but the riscv I saw thus far seemed to be mixed arm and riscv which seemed weird
Curious: What does the "imac" stand for in the architecture target name ?
IMAC are the RISC-V extensions supported:
I = Base integer instruction set, 32-bit
M = Standard extension for integer multiplication and division
A = Standard extension for atomic instructions
C = Standard extension for compressed instructions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#ISA_base_and_extensions
Thanks.I can't believe they chose non-arcane, memory-friendly letters. Kind of rare in naming hardware I feel (unless it's not ?)
There are a few lettered extensions to the base RV32I instruction set. e.g.:
* https://docs.riscv.org/reference/isa/unpriv/m-st-ext.html
where did you find it?
very interesting, do you have a pointer with more info on what kind of SIMD support it has?
Hopefully comparable or better than ESP32S3.
But with the weird alignment thing fixed
How do I order a few samples, seem like there is a MOQ ?
Also I want to dive into hardware stuff but I'm always clueless as to what I do afterwards when this would arrive? Are you using a generic board or are you ordering and designing PCBs to hook this up to?
What are you using it for ? How do I go from a prototype to mass production via kickstarter?
This looks like the long-awaited replacement for the original ESP32. The S and C series have been relatively low performance (the S better than the C but stuck on the outgoing Xtensa architecture), the P4 is powerful but lacks wireless. This is a relatively high performance, dual core MCU with wireless; a nice default option for low volume designs where being able to copy a previous implementation is more important than saving a few cents. Just like the ESP32. Nice.
Previous discussion from two months ago, when this was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561678
Good to have WiFi and wired ethernet on the same part again.
Although we lost the MIPI support that the P4 dual-core RISC-V line has.
How does wired internet technically work on these chips? Is it just 8 dedicated GPIO pins?
Not "just", it's (presumably) 8 dedicated pins that form an RMII interface. This is not the same 8 pins as you'll find in your 4-pair Ethernet cable, it's a separate protocol which can be connected to an Ethernet PHY transciever like a TI DP83867E [1], which is further connected to "magnetics" [2], a convenient package of 8 integrated transformers and chokes that provide the galvanic isolation feature of an Ethernet connection.
A few SoCs provide integrated PHY transceivers, but usually it's an external chip.
[1]: https://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/dp83867e.pdf
[2]: https://yageogroup.com/content/datasheet/asset/file/DATASHEE...
Looks like you need an external PHY. It can talk to the PHY with RGMII which uses 12 pins, which are muxed with GPIO8-19.
I've been building hobby LED art projects with WLED (exclusively built on the ESP32 platform). It's been a blast. These little boards are so powerful and the open source community continues to amaze me.
My preferred controller platform is of the QuinLED line - comes with power distribution, voltage regulators, fat copper lines, configurable data-line resistors, and smart auxiliary hardware support all for an affordable $30-$50 per controller. (quinled.info)
<https://kno.wled.ge/> - WLED homepage and probably my favorite clever URL of all time.
Any reason why this device wouldn't have Z-Wave? Is the wireless protocol significantly different than Thread and Zigbee?
I don't know for sure but Bluetooth, WiFi and Zigbee are on the same frequency band. Z-Wave is not.
(at least in the US, not sure about other countries)
This device only has a 2.4GHz radio. Z-Wave is sub-1GHz.
It being RISC-V is awesome, but how does it make sense that it's S series when S series have been Xtensa cores? Why is it not C series?
I'm interested in audio out because I dabble in musical instruments.
What's the state of Bluetooth audio out on microcontrollers? Is low latency and high quality output possible?
Low latency in Bluetooth audio comes down to codecs and the best are proprietary.
If you want to really cut down latency and need wireless with hardware like this, you could use a second ESP32 and send your own bitstream between them.
Is there any reason you want wireless? Bluetooth audio is a disaster, AFAIK. You don't want to use it for music. Just go wired, the ether is too cramped already.
This looks like a nucleo144, except its risc-v... but why would I use it over said nucleo144?
Better connectivity. The Nucleo 144 only has 100mbit ethernet, as far as I can tell, but the new ESP chip has gigabit, along with wireless.
WiFi+BLE?
And even if you don't need WiFi + BLE for a particular project, you may need it for other projects, and it might have value for you to standardise on one ecosystem.
When can we buy these?
The dev boards are already up for sale. I'm personally looking forward to the modules being stocked on LCSC, no idea when though.
> The dev boards are already up for sale.
I didn't expect to see that for a while yet. Not the usual Espressif announce and wait a year+ pattern.
Love to see more RISC-V in the wild
The 1GB bandwidth is interesting. It also has Simd instructions too.
Could this theoretically be used as a router or wireguard vpn instance?
Theoretically, yeah. Though at 320Mhz, with only 2.4ghz wireless, even with two cores, I doubt it's going to get anywhere near the throughput to fill the gigabit connection.