In a transfer that’s little doubt going to upset and confuse many, Espressif has launched its latest microcontroller — the ESP32-S31. The complicated half right here is that the ESP32-S sequence was at all times the one primarily based on Tensilica Xtensa LX7 cores, whereas the ESP32-C sequence was the one utilizing RISC-V cores.
That stated, if one appears to be like at it as a beefier -S3 MCU it does have some interesting upgrades. The obvious enhancements are with using WiFi 6, in addition to Bluetooth Basic and LE 5.4, together with LE Audio. There’s additionally Thread and Zigbee help for many who are into such issues.
The Ethernet MAC obtained a bump from the 100 Mbit RMII MAC in earlier MCUs and is now gigabit-rated, whereas the variety of GPIO is considerably increased at 60 as a substitute of 45 on the -S3. On the RAM aspect, issues are largely the identical, aside from DDR PSRAM help, with octal SPI providing as much as 250 MHz in comparison with 80 MHz on the -S3.
On the CPU aspect the up-to-320 MHz RISC-V cores are more likely to be about as highly effective because the 240 MHz LX7 cores within the -S3, primarily based on the ESP32-C sequence efficiency when it comes to IPC. Total it does seem to be a reasonably good MCU, it’s simply complicated that it doesn’t use LX7 cores with the sequence it was put into. When this MCU shall be obtainable on the market doesn’t appear to be recognized but, with solely samples obtainable to pick out clients.
