ESP32-S31

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.

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...

Is anyone else worried that these chips are all made in China?

I'm excited that this MCU and the P4 has RISC-V CLIC. That puts it at least on par with Cortex NVIC and enables bare metal frameworks like Rust RTIC to work really well.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Any reason why this device wouldn't have Z-Wave? Is the wireless protocol significantly different than Thread and Zigbee?

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?

This looks like a nucleo144, except its risc-v... but why would I use it over said nucleo144?

When can we buy these?

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?

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