Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Launches with Arm + Risc V Cores: hands-on with the new, $5 microcontroller

[Admin]

We got early access to the latest Raspberry Pi Pico, the Pico 2 and while it's not smooth sailing, there is much to be excited about, including the first RISC-V product from Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 Launches with Arm + Risc V Cores: hands-on with the new, $5 microcontroller : Read more

 

[Giroro]

ESP32 is still more powerful, still has wifi, and is still about the same price, sometimes cheaper. It's a better choice for anybody who needs functionality and performance over brand recognition.

But any of these are going to be at least 100x more powerful than you would reasonably need for non IoT projects where a microcontroller (without wifi) is the right choice. The main limiting factor is probably usually going to be GPIO.
If you're unhappy with your the compute performance or are running out of memory in your current RPi pico, then you need to either stop programming it with Python, or stop thinking that a microcontroller can be used like a general use computer.... Probably both.

 

[Siana Gearz]

ESP32 is still more powerful, still has wifi, and is still about the same price, sometimes cheaper. It's a better choice for anybody who needs functionality and performance over brand recognition.

Power isn't everything, RP has better microcontroller properties. Although there is a ADC linearity fault on the 2040 (might be fixed on the new one), that ADC is still better behaved than on ESP32. ESP ADC has a really weird curve which you can calibrate out, and monotonicity fault which you can do nothing about. RP ADC is monotonic so you can compensate for the weirdly jumpy linearity. ESP is also notorious for stalling due to the wireless baseband running on the same chip, which you don't have a ton of insight into, RP is more predictable and better realtime properties and more open. The PIO peripheral alone is spectacularly useful.

 

[BrianLinuxing]

Thanks for the short summary Les, concise and covers all of the necessary points.

 

[Findecanor]

ESP32 is still more powerful, still has wifi, and is still about the same price, sometimes cheaper.

ESP32-C3: 1 core at ~400 CoreMark at 160 MHz
RP2350: two cores at once of:
- two ARM Cortex-M33F cores at ~600 CoreMark at 150 MHz, overclockable to twice the speed.
- two Hazard3 RV32IMACB cores at ~570 CoreMark, at 150 Mhz.

There will be a PIco 2 W. I expect that one to contain the package with more pins: they had to cut a few corners on the Pico W.

 

[Smurfix]

Although there is a ADC linearity fault on the 2040 (might be fixed on the new one),

The docs state that this fault has been fixed on the RP2350.

 

[Smurfix]

ESP32-C3: 1 core at ~400 CoreMark at 160 MHz
RP2350: two cores at once of:
- two ARM Cortex-M33F cores at ~600 CoreMark at 150 MHz, overclockable to twice the speed.
- two Hazard3 RV32IMACB cores at ~570 CoreMark, at 150 Mhz.

Did anybody measure the power consumption during these tests? I'm very curious whether the Hazard3 is more power effective. RiscV tends to require fewer transistors than ARM.