13 ms·

I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350

700 points by elipsitz 2y ago

Taniwha 2y ago
New BusPirate 5XL&6 also dropping today - use the 3250 https://buspirate.com/ https://buspirate.com/
RA2lover 2y ago
Is there any info on the analog capabilities compared to the RP2040?
- TomWhitwell 2y ago
  Looks like 4 x ADC channels again, no on-board DAC
  - RA2lover 2y ago
    the 80-pin version has 8.
elipsitz 2y ago
Can’t find an official announcement or datasheet yet, but according to this post: * 2x Cortex-M33F * improved DMA * more and improved PIO * external PSRAM support * variants with internal flash (2MB) and 80 pins (!) * 512KiB ram (double) * some RISC-V cores? Low power maybe? Looks like a significant jump over the RP2040!
- zrail 2y ago
  This is pretty exciting. Can't wait for the datasheet!
- dave78 2y ago
  Pico 2, using the 2350, seems to be announced: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Only $1 more than the original Pico, that's an absolute steal. Although the Pico2 doesn't have PSRAM onboard so there's room for higher end RP235x boards above it.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    Make one in an Arduino Uno form factor and double the price and they'd make a killing :-) I try to dissuade n00bs from starting their arduino journey with the ancient AVR-based devices, but a lot of the peripherals expect to plug into an Uno.
    - moffkalast 2y ago
      Well there's the UNO-R4 Renasas I suppose, but this would be much cooler indeed. There's also the 2040 Connect in the Nano form factor with the extra IMU.
    - ta988 2y ago
      Look at the adafruit metro then. They just announced the rp2350 version
- deleted 2y ago
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- repelsteeltje 2y ago
  ... And RP2354A/B even has 2MB built in flash!
  - andylinpersonal 2y ago
    Indeed an in-package winbond flash die though.
    - jacobmarble 2y ago
      Please explain. What is a better alternative that could have been chosen? I’m just happy to have one fewer component on my boards.
      - jercos 2y ago
        Downside is it occupies a CS on the QSPI controller, presumably bonding to the same pads as the QSPI pins on the package, so now you only have one external memory IC. It's a very small tradeoff all things considered, but is still technically a tiny disadvantage over highly integrated MCUs. A potential alternative would have been a directly memory-mapped NOR flash die, but that would have required more bond wires, more dedicated pads on the die, a port on the bus, and on top of that the memory die would have been more expensive too. An older (and often impractical) alternative is to use a single die with both flash and SoC on, in the same process. This usually forces a larger-than-desired process node to match the flash technology, making the SoC take up more space. The result requires no extra bond wires or pads, but now you're really manufacturing a flash chip with an MCU attached.
- KaiserPro 2y ago
  I'm hoping that its got much better power management. That would be really cool for me.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Small (0.5 bits effective) improvement to the ADC also, per the datasheet.
jsheard 2y ago
Speak of the devil: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156743 Very nice that the "3" turned out to mean the modern M33 core rather than the much older M3 core. It has a real FPU!
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  Yes, well-guessed
- zedcombination 2y ago
  Yes, it's pretty lame that Raspberry Pi has such a "flexible" definition of "low power". i.e. the RP2350 is not low power at all. Looks like Espressif will keep getting my business. What a missed opportunity by RPI.
limpbizkitfan 2y ago
Is there an exhaustive list of stm32h7 errata? Has anyone compiled a defect list?
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  STM has an inexhaustible list of them, but does not list at least a few QSPI ones that I am aware of. :/
  - limpbizkitfan 2y ago
    >:( hoping to play with a pico 2 soon so I can convince my team to move off stm32h7
- uticus 2y ago
  Apart from official ST documentation [0]? For comparison, RP2350 errata in Appendix E of [1] [0] https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32h745-755/documentation.html https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32... [1] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.p...
zrail 2y ago
Looks like the SDK got updated a couple hours ago: https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/commit/efe2103f9b28458a1615ff096054479743ade236 https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/commit/efe2103f9b284...
blackkat 2y ago
Some specs here: https://www.digikey.ca/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-sc1631-pico-2 https://www.digikey.ca/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/r... Based on the RP2350, designed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom Dual Arm M33s at 150 MHz with FPU 520 KiB of SRAM Robust security features (signed boot, OTP, SHA-256, TRNG, glitch detectors and Arm TrustZone for Cortex®-M) Optional, dual RISC-V Hazard3 CPUs at 150 MHz Low-power operation PIO v2 with 3 × programmable I/O co-processors (12 × programmable I/O state machines) for custom peripheral support Support for PSRAM, faster off-chip XIP QSPI Flash interface 4 MB on-board QSPI Flash storage 5 V tolerant GPIOs Open source C/C++ SDK, MicroPython support Software-compatible with Pico 1/RP2040 Drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over USB Castellated module allows soldering directly to carrier boards Footprint- and pin-compatible with Pico 1 (21 mm × 51 mm form factor) 26 multifunction GPIO pins, including three analog inputs Operating temperature: -20°C to +85°C Supported input voltage: 1.8 VDC to 5.5 VDC
- synergy20 2y ago
  Wow, can't wait. Love the 5V GPIO and security features.
  - Daneel_ 2y ago
    5V GPIO is a huge deal for me - this immediately opens up a huge range of integrations without having to worry about line level conversion. I can’t wait to use this!
    - azinman2 2y ago
      Does tolerant mean ok to do? Or it just won’t fry your chip but you should actually run at 3.3?
      - tredre3 2y ago
        It usually means it's clamped so it might result in a small amount of wasted energy/heat but no damage. So yes it means it's okay but if you can you should go for 3.3.
maccam912 2y ago
Can anyone speak about plans for a Pico 2 W (or Pico W 2)? I've been playing around recently with mine and even just syncing with the current time over wifi opens up a lot of possibilities.
- coder543 2y ago
  Jeff Geerling said the Pico 2 W is coming later this year: https://youtu.be/oXF_lVwA8A4?t=445 https://youtu.be/oXF_lVwA8A4?t=445
- MarcScott 2y ago
  It's in this post - https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new...
katzinsky 2y ago
I suppose this isn't the first time a company that started out as a hobbiest board manufacturer produced really amazing micro controllers but man is it insane how far they've knocked the ball out of the park.
synergy20 2y ago
You can pick either ARM cores or RISC-V cores on the same die? Never saw design like this before. Will this impact price and power consumption? "The Hazard3 cores are optional: Users can at boot time select a pair of included Arm Cortex-M33 cores to run, or the pair of Hazard3 cores. Both options run at 150 MHz. The more bold could try running one RV and one Arm core together rather than two RV or two Arm. Hazard3 is an open source design, and all the materials for it are here. It's a lightweight three-stage in-order RV32IMACZb* machine, which means it supports the base 32-bit RISC-V ISA with support for multiplication and division in hardware, atomic instructions, bit manipulation, and more."
- bri3d 2y ago
  This "switchable cores" thing has been appearing in some products for a few years now, for example Sipeed SG2002 (LicheeRV). The area occupied by the actual instruction core is usually pretty small compared to peripherals and internal memories.
  - zer00eyz 2y ago
    The MilkV Duo also has this feature I believe... https://milkv.io/duo https://milkv.io/duo
    - Teknoman117 2y ago
      It's the same SoC as the LicheeRV (SG2002)
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Apparently (this is news to me), you can also choose to run 1+1 Arm/RISC-V, you don't have to switch both cores either/or. Eben Upton: "They're selectable at boot time: Each port into the bus fabric can be connected either to an M33 or a Hazard3 via a mux. You can even, if you're feeling obtuse, run with one of each." Source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/pi_pico_2_risc_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/pi_pico_2_risc_v/
numpad0 2y ago
https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/ 4 variants? "A" and "B" variants in QFN60 and QFN80, "2350" and "2354" variants with and without 2MB Flash. CPU can be switched between dual RISC-V @ 150MHz or dual Cortex-M33 @ 300MHz by software or in one-time programming memory(=permanently). Datasheet, core switching details, most of docs are 404 as of now; I guess they didn't have embargo date actually written in `crontab`. e: and datasheet is up!
doe_eyes 2y ago
I think it's a good way to introduce these chips, and it's a great project, but the author's (frankly weird) beef with STM32H7 is detracting from the point they're trying to make: > So, in conclusion, go replan all your STM32H7 projects with RP2350, save money, headaches, and time. STM32H7 chips can run much faster and have a wider selection of peripherals than RP2350. RP2350 excels in some other dimensions, including the number of (heterogenous) cores. Either way, this is nowhere near apples-to-apples. Further, they're not the only Cortex-M7 vendor, so if the conclusion is that STM32H7 sucks (it mostly doesn't), it doesn't follow that you should be instead using Cortex-M33 on RPi. You could be going with Microchip (hobbyist-friendly), NXP (preferred by many commercial buyers), or a number of lesser-known manufacturers.
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  1. Nobody has a wider selection of peripherals than a chip with 3 PIOs. 2. And my beef is personal - I spent months (MONTHS of my life) debugging the damn H7, only to find a set of huge bugs in the main reason I had been trying to use it (QSPI ram support), showed it to the manufacturer, and had them do nothing. Later they came back and, without admitting i was right about the bugs, said that "another customer is seeing same issues, what was the workaround you said found?" I told them that i'll share the workaround when they admit the problem. Silence since. I fully reserve the right to be pissy at shitty companies in public on my website!
  - doe_eyes 2y ago
    I'm not arguing you can't be angry with them, I'm just saying that to me, it detracts from the point about the new platform. Regarding #1, I'm sure you know that peripherals in the MCU world mean more than just digital I/O. Further, even in the digital domain, the reason PIO isn't more popular is that most people don't want to DIY complex communication protocols.
  - uticus 2y ago
    [edit: I retract this, I see you’ve had secretly in your possession to play with for over a year. You lucky dog. ] > I have been anti-recommending STM’s chips to everyone for a few years now due to STM’s behaviour with regards to the clearly-demonstrated-to-them hardware issues. You certainly reserve the right. However it is unclear to me why the recommendation to complaints over a months-long period is a product that has just been released. Trying to ask in a very unbiased way since as a hobbyist I’m looking into ST, Microchip, and RP2040. For my part I’ve had two out of four RP2040 come to me dead on arrival, as part of two separate boards from different vendors - one being Pi Pico from Digilent. Not a ton of experience with Microchip but I hear they have their own problems. Nobody’s perfect, the question is how do the options compare.
kaycebasques 2y ago
Official news post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 Official product page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192269
- kjagiello 2y ago
  Datasheet: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.p...
- dang 2y ago
  Thanks! Macroexpanded: Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 - Aug 2024 (71 comments)
jonathrg 2y ago
Can someone explain the benefit of having essentially 4 cores (2 ARM + 2 RISC-V) on the chip but only having 2 able to run simultaneously? Does this take significantly less die space than having all 4 available at all times?
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  cores are high bandwidth bus masters. Making a crossbar that supports 5 high bandwidth masters (4x core + dma) is likely harder, larger, and higher power than one that supports 3.
  - ebenupton 2y ago
    It's actually 10 masters (I+D for 4 cores + DMA read + DMA write) versus 6 masters. Or you could pre-arbitrate each pair of I and each pair of D ports. But even there the timing impact is unpalatable.
    - dmitrygr 2y ago
      Which is even more impressive yet :)
- deleted 2y ago
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- coder543 2y ago
  Coordinating access to the memory bus and peripherals is probably not easy to do when the cores weren’t ever designed to work together. Doing so could require a power/performance penalty at all times, even though most users are unlikely to want to deal with two completely different architectures across four cores on one microcontroller. Having both architectures available is a cool touch. I believe I criticized the original RP2040 for not being bold enough to go RISC-V, but now they’re offering users the choice. I’ll be very curious to see how the two cores compare… I suspect the ARM cores will probably be noticeably better in this case.
mmmlinux 2y ago
And still no USB C on the official devboard.
- jsheard 2y ago
  There's plenty of alternatives right out of the gate, at least: https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/powered-by/product-catalogue/?category=RP2350 https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/powered-by/product-... Pimoroni has a maxed-out pin-compatible version with 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, and USB-C: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pimoroni-pico-plus-2 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pimoroni-pico-plus-2
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Unless the USB-C connector costs $7-10, these are beyond ridiculously overpriced compared to the official dev board. At least throw in an IMU or something if you plan to sell low volumes at high prices jeez.
    - jsheard 2y ago
      The cheapest one I've seen so far is the XIAO RP2350, which is $5, same as the official Pico board. I'm sure there will be more cheap options once more Chinese manufacturers get their hands on the chips, no-name USB-C RP2040 boards are ridiculously cheap.
- naikrovek 2y ago
  > And still no USB C on the official devboard. Do you live in a universe where micro-USB cables are not available, or something? There's gonna be something or other that needs micro-USB for the next decade, so just buy a few and move on. They're not expensive. [later edit: I bet it has to do with backwards compatibility. They don't want people to need to rework case designs to use something that is meant as a drop-in replacement for the Pi Pico 1.]
  - ewoodrich 2y ago
kvemkon 2y ago
> 1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support Sure, after integrating USB 2.0 HS or 1Gb-Ethernet the pico2-board will cost more than $5. So, integrated high-speed interfacing with PC was not a nice-to-have option (for special chip flavor)?
- solidninja 2y ago
  I think the target here is low-power peripherals rather than speedy peripherals, and the price is very nice for that :)
  - kvemkon 2y ago
    Here [1] someone asked to make RP1 I/O chip available, but actually RP2350 is what would fit the purpose. [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/rp1-the-silicon-controlling-raspberry-pi-5-i-o-designed-here-at-raspberry-pi/#comment-1594799 https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/rp1-the-silicon-controlling...
- rasz 2y ago
  >USB 2.0 HS 480 Mbps SERDES > or 1Gb-Ethernet 1.25 Gbps SERDES
  - kvemkon 2y ago
    RP1 I/O chip on RPi5 has so many high-speed interfaces. I've been thinking RP2350 could be some smart I/O chip for a PC/notebook/network attached computers (with only 1 necessary high-speed connection).
  - namibj 2y ago
    GigE is actually PAM-4 at ~250 MBaud.
    - kvemkon 2y ago
      1.25 Gbps would be needed for low-pin-count SGMII interface to a PHY chip.
tecleandor 2y ago
Not off topic but a bit tangentially... How difficult would be emulating an old SRAM chip with an RP2040 or an RP2350? It's an early 80s (or older) 2048 word, 200ns access time CMOS SRAM that is used to save presets on an old Casio synth. It's not a continuous memory read, it just reads when loading the preset to memory. I feel like PIO would be perfect for that.
- bogantech 2y ago
  For that you could just some FRAM with minimal effort https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/877-FM16W08-SG https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/877-FM16W08-SG
- dmitrygr 2y ago
  I did that, not just SRAM but also ROM, to fool a MC68EZ328 successfully. It works well. PIO + DMA does it well. Specifically i replaced rom & ram in an old Palm Pilot with an RP2040: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KabVe5CrfckqnFEt7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/KabVe5CrfckqnFEt7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGAkp6HoYAJc3Uft7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGAkp6HoYAJc3Uft7 Edit: I did not yet update the rePalm article but much about that is in the Palm discord. https://discord.gg/qs8wQ4Bf https://discord.gg/qs8wQ4Bf see #repalm-project channel
  - tecleandor 2y ago
    Ooooh, that looks cool and the PCB seems simple (at least from this side). Congrats! Do you have anything published?
  - alfanick 2y ago
    Pokemon are nice touch here
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  If it's not an academic question and you have an actual need for the SRAM, what's the p/n? I have some old parts stock and may have what you need.
swetland 2y ago
Lots of nice improvements here. The RISC-V RV32I option is nice -- so many RV32 MCUs have absurdly tiny amounts of SRAM and very limited peripherals. The Cortex M33s are a biiig upgrade from the M0+s in the RP2040. Real atomic operations. An FPU. I'm exited.
- guenthert 2y ago
  Many people seem excited about the FPU. Could you help me understand what hardware floating point support is needed in a MCU for? I remember DSPs using (awkward word-size) fixed point arithmetic.
  - jercos 2y ago
    I think you highlight the exact issue rather well... fixed-point DSP instructions are awkward to use. The FPU and the double-precision hardware with its baked operations work with IEEE floats out of the box, so the programmer can be "lazy." A thousand new programmers can write something like `* 0.7` in C++ inside a tight loop without it stealing 200 instructions from the timing of the rest of the program.
fouronnes3 2y ago
Curious about the low-power and sleep mode improvements!
- geerlingguy 2y ago
  Me too; I had a little trouble with MicroPython lightsleep and deepsleep in the pre-release version I was testing. I will re-test and try to get better sleep state in my code either today or tomorrow!
bschwindHN 2y ago
Alright, what's the max image resolution/framerate someone is going to pump out with the HSTX peripheral?
- spacedcowboy 2y ago
  Unfortunately the starter example [1] hasn't made it into the public tree (yet ?) [1] https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/blob/master/dvi_out_hstx_encoder https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/blob/master/dvi...
  - bschwindHN 2y ago
    I wonder what other uses people will find for it. It's one-way data transfer, I wonder if it could be hooked up to a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 peripheral, or an ethernet PHY, or something else.
    - spacedcowboy 2y ago
      Pretty sure I'm going to link it up with an FPGA at some point - as long as the data is unidirectional, this is a promise of 2400 Mbit/sec - which for a $1 microcontroller is insane. If it overclocks like the processor, you're up to 4800 MBit/sec ... stares into the distance I can use PIO in the other direction, but this has DDR, so you'll never get the same performance. It's a real shame they didn't make it bi-directional, but maybe the use-case here is (as hinted by the fact it can do TMDS internally) for DVI out. If they had make it bidirectional, I could see networks of these little microcontrollers transmitting/receiving at gigabit rates... Taken together with PIO, XMOS would have to sit up straight pretty quickly...
      - bschwindHN 2y ago
        Right? Bidirectional capability at those speeds would be incredible for the price of this chip. Either way, still looking forward to see what people cook up with it, and hopefully I'll find a use for it as well. Maybe combine it with some cheap 1920x1080 portable monitors to have some beautiful dashboards around the house or something...
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SethTro 2y ago
This has 2 of the 3 features (float support, faster clock) + more POI that was keeping me on ESP32. For projects that need wifi, and can tolerate the random interrupts, I'll stick with ESP32.
jononor 2y ago
Aha, the 3 is for M33, not Cortex M3 (as some speculated based on the name). That makes a lot more sense! Integrated FPU is a big improvement over the RP2040, and M33 is a modern but proven core.
gchadwick 2y ago
This looks awesome a really great step up from the RP2040. I'm a big fan of the original and I'm excited to see all the improvements and upgrades. I imagine with the new secure boot functionality they've got a huge new range of customers to tempt to. Also exciting to see them dip their toe into the open silicon waters with the hazard 3 RISCV core https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3 https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3. Of course it they'd used Ibex https://github.com/lowrisc/ibex https://github.com/lowrisc/ibex the RISC-V core we develop and maintain at lowRISC that would have been even better but you can't have everything ;)
rowanG077 2y ago
Would the pio now support sane Ethernet using rmii for example?
- rscott2049 2y ago
  I'm assuming you've looked at the pico-rmii-ethernet library? If so, I feel your pain - I've been fixing issues, and am about halfway done. (This is for the DECstation2040 project, available on github). Look for a release in late aug/early sep. (Maybe with actual lance code? Dmitry??) The RP2350 will make RMII slightly easier - the endless DMA allows elimination of the DMA reload channel(s).
  - rowanG077 2y ago
    I looked at it and dismissed it as too hacky for production. I don't remember the real reason why. I would have to look through my notes. The main question is whether the RP2350 will change that. As in it actually possible to do bug free without weird hacks.
    - rscott2049 2y ago
      Agreed. I re-wrote the Rx PIO routine to do a proper interrupt at EOF, and added a DMA driven ring buffer, which eliminated a lot of the hackiness...
nimish 2y ago
Gross, the dev board uses micro-USB. It's 2024! Otherwise amazing work. Exactly what's needed to compete with the existing giants.
- sowbug 2y ago
  Perhaps the unfortunate choice of micro USB is to discourage real consumer products from being built with the dev board.
  - user_7832 2y ago
    I wonder if it is more about simply shaving a few cents off. Full USB-C protocol implementation may be much more difficult.
    - hypercube33 2y ago
      USB-C doesn't require anything special USB wise as it's decoupled from the versioned standard. It just has more pins and works with all modern cables. Ideally the cables won't wear out like Mini and Micro and get loosey goosey in the ports.
      - ewoodrich 2y ago
        Yep, a USB-C connector is more or less a drop in replacement for MicroUSB if you don’t need USB3 or USB-PD. With one aggravating exception: it requires adding two 5.1kΩ pulldown resistors to be compatible with C-C cables. Thus signaling to a charger that the sink is a legacy non-PD device requesting 5V. Which is apparently an impossible ask for manufacturers of dev boards or cheap devices in general. It’s slightly more understandable for a tried and true dev board that’s just been connector swapped to USB-C (and I’ll happily take it over dealing with Micro) but inexcusable for a new design. My hope is Apple going USB-C only on all their charging bricks and now even C-C cables for the iPhone will eventually force Chinese OEMs to build standard compliant designs. Or deal with a 50% Amazon return rate for “broken no power won’t charge”.
      - 2y ago
ChrisArchitect 2y ago
Related: Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341
weinzierl 2y ago
This is fantastic news. Is there information on power consumption? This is something that precludes a good deal of use cases for the RP2040 unfortunately and any improvements here would be good, but maybe the RP's are just not made for ultra low power?
- ebenupton 2y ago
  Significant improvements to flat-out power (switcher vs LDO) and to idle power (low quiescent current LDO for retention). Still not a coin-cell device, but heading in the right direction.
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
This is very exciting! For the last several years I have been developing a brushless motor driver based on the RP2040 [1]. The driver module can handle up to 53 volts at 30A continuous, 50A peak. I broke the driver out to a separate module recently which is helpful for our farm robot and is also important for driver testing as we improve the design. However this rev seems pretty solid, so I might build a single board low cost integrated single motor driver with the RP2350 soon! With the RP2040 the loop rate was 8khz which is totally fine for big farm robot drive motors, but some high performance drivers with floating point do 50khz loop rate. My board runs SimpleFOC, and people on the forum have been talking about building a flagship design, but they need support for sensorless control as well as floating point, so if I use the new larger pinout variant of the RP2350 with 8 ADC pins, we can measure three current signals and three bridge voltages to make a nice sensorless driver! It will be a few months before I can have a design ready, but follow the git repo or my twitter profile [2] if you would like to stay up to date! [1] https://github.com/tlalexander/rp2040-motor-controller https://github.com/tlalexander/rp2040-motor-controller [2] https://twitter.com/TLAlexander https://twitter.com/TLAlexander
- sgu999 2y ago
  > for our farm robot That peaked my interest, here's the video for those who want to save a few clicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFhTPHlPAAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFhTPHlPAAk I absolutely love that they use bike parts for the feet and wheels.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
    I have given some thought to a two-wheeled electric tractor for dealing with mud -- horse paddocks turn into basically a 1-foot deep slurry after heavy rain and it can be easier to deal with something small that sinks through the mud, down to solid ground than something using large floatation tires. Additional problem with large tires is that they tend to throw mud around, making everyone nearby even more dirty. I haven't actually built anything (been paying attention to Taylor's work, though), but I came to the same conclusion that bike wheels & tires would probably be a good choice. It also doesn't hurt that we have many discarded kids' bikes all over the place.
brcmthrowaway 2y ago
Why would I pick this over esp32 if I need to get shit done
ryukoposting 2y ago
I can't imagine someone using an RP2040 in a real product, but the RP2350 fixes enough of my complaints that I'd be really excited to give it a shot. There's a lot going for the 2040, don't get me wrong. TBMAN is a really cool concept. It overclocks like crazy. PIO is truly innovative, and it's super valuable for boatloads of companies looking to replace their 8051s/whatever with a daughterboard-adapted ARM core. But, for every cool thing about the RP2040, there was a bad thing. DSP-level clock speeds but no FPU, and no hardware integer division. A USB DFU function embedded in boot ROM is flatly undesirable in an MCU with no memory protection. PIO support is extremely limited in third-party SDKs like Zephyr, which puts a low ceiling on its usefulness in large-scale projects. The RP2350 fixes nearly all of my complaints, and that's really exciting. PIO is a really cool concept, but relying on it to implement garden-variety peripherals like CAN or SDMMC immediately puts RP2350 at a disadvantage. The flexibility is very cool, but if I need to get a product up and running, the last thing I want to do is fiddle around with a special-purpose assembly language. My hope is that they'll eventually provide a library of ready-made "soft peripherals" for common things like SD/MMC, MII, Bluetooth HCI, etc. That would make integration into Zephyr (and friends) easier, and it would massively expand the potential use cases for the chip.
- petra 2y ago
  For high volume products, given the low cost of this chip, it would make sense to bother with the PIO or it's open-source libraries.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- TaylorAlexander 2y ago
  > My hope is that they'll eventually provide a library of ready-made "soft peripherals" Perhaps they could be more ready-made, but there are loads of official PIO examples that are easy to get started with. https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/tree/master/pio https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/tree/master/pio
  - ryukoposting 2y ago
jackwilsdon 2y ago
I'm most excited for the partition and address translation support - partitions can be mapped to the same address for A/B boot slots (and it supports "try before you buy" to boot into a slot temporarily). No more compiling two copies for the A and B slots (at different addresses)!
vardump 2y ago
RP2040 had Doom ported to it. https://kilograham.github.io/rp2040-doom/ https://kilograham.github.io/rp2040-doom/ RP2350 looks very much like it could potentially run Quake. Heck, some of the changes almost feel like they're designed for this purpose. FPU, two cores at 150 MHz, overclockable beyond 300 MHz and it supports up to 16 MB of PSRAM with hardware R/W paging support.
- chipxsd 2y ago
  While outputting DVI! I wouldn't be surprised.
  - rvense 2y ago
    Mouser have 64 megabyte PSRAMs. I really want a Mac System 7 grade operating system for this chip...
    - dmitrygr 2y ago
      No they do not. 64megabit
      - rvense 2y ago
        Did you bother to check? It's octal, not QSPI, so I don't know if it's compatible. (edit - and 1.8V, inconvenient)
        andylinpersonal 2y ago
        Octal PSRAM usually cannot fallback to quad mode like some octal flash did.
        rvense 2y ago
        Actually reading the datasheet[1] it doesn't look like it. [1] https://www.mouser.dk/datasheet/2/1127/APM_PSRAM_OPI_Xccela_APS25608N_OBRx_v1_0_PKG-1954871.pdf https://www.mouser.dk/datasheet/2/1127/APM_PSRAM_OPI_Xccela_...
v1ne 2y ago
Hmm, it's really nice that they fixed so many complaints. But honestly, reading the errata sheet, I had to chuckle that Dmitry didn't tear this chip to pieces. I mean, there's erratums about obscure edge cases, about miniscule bugs. Sure, mistakes happen. And then there's this: Internal pull-downs don't work reliably. Workaround: Disconnect digital input and only connect while you're reading the value. Well, great! Now it takes 3 instructions to read data from a port, significantly reducing the rate at which you can read data! I guess it's just rare to have pull-downs, so that's naturally mitigating the issue a bit.
- colejohnson66 2y ago
  You can also use external resistors.
urbandw311er 2y ago
I absolutely love this guy’s enthusiasm.
kaycebasques 2y ago
Big day for my team (Pigweed)! Some of our work got mentioned in the main RP2350/Pico2 announcement [1] but for many months we've been working on a new end-to-end SDK [2] built on top of Bazel [3] with support for both RP2040 and RP2350, including upstreaming Bazel support to the Pico SDK. Our new "Tour of Pigweed" [4] shows a bunch of Pigweed features working together in a single codebase, e.g. hermetic builds, on-device unit tests, RPC-centric comms, factory-at-your-desk testing, etc. We're over in our Discord [5] if you've got any questions [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new... [2] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/08/introducing-pigweed-sdk.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/08/introducing-pigwee... [3] https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html [4] https://pigweed.dev/docs/showcases/sense/ https://pigweed.dev/docs/showcases/sense/ [5] https://discord.gg/M9NSeTA https://discord.gg/M9NSeTA
- dheera 2y ago
  I hate Bazel. A build system for C/C++ should not require a Java JVM. Please keep Java out of microcontroller ecosystem please -__--
  - jaeckel 2y ago
    And only discord on top, but maybe I'm simply not hip enough
    - kaycebasques 2y ago
      I forwarded your feedback to the team and we are now vigorously debating which other comms channels we can all live with
  - kaycebasques 2y ago
    We realize Bazel is not the right build system for every embedded project. The "Bazel for Embedded" post that came out today (we co-authored it) talks more about why we find Bazel so compelling: https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html
boznz 2y ago
> I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350 I got all mine, these guys really listened to the (minor) criticisms of the RP2040 on their forums and knocked them out of the ball park. Cant wait to get my hands on real hardware. Well done guys
- ebenupton 2y ago
  Thank you. It's been a major effort from the team, and I'm very proud of what they've accomplished.
  - vardump 2y ago
    Thanks for a great product! A (small?) ask. Can we have instruction timings please? Like how many cycles SMLAL (signed multiply long, with accumulate) takes? Will there be an official development board with all 48 GPIOs exposed?
    - ebenupton 2y ago
      Cortex-M33 timings aren't documented, but one of our security consultants has made a lot of progress reverse engineering them to support his work on trace stacking for differential power analysis of our AES implementation. I've asked him to write this up to go in a future rev of the datasheet. No official 48 GPIO board, I think: this is slightly intentional because it creates market space for our partners to do something.
      - vardump 2y ago
        > I've asked him to write this up to go in a future rev of the datasheet. Thanks!
begriffs 2y ago
I see CMSIS definitions for the RP2040 at https://github.com/raspberrypi/CMSIS-RP2xxx-DFP https://github.com/raspberrypi/CMSIS-RP2xxx-DFP but none for RP2350. Maybe they'll eventually appear in that repo, given its name is RP2xxx? I thought vendors are legally obligated to provide CMSIS definitions when they license an ARM core.
tibbon 2y ago
Thanks for making the DEF CON badge! 10000x cooler than last year
hashtag-til 2y ago
The disclaimer is brutally honest. I love it.
GeorgeTirebiter 2y ago
What is the process node used? Who is fabbing this for them? Given that the new chip is bigger, my guess is the same (old) process node is being used. RP2040 is manufactured on a 40nm process node. Whoops, I read the fine print: RP2350 is manufactured on a 40nm process node.
ckemere 2y ago
I wish there was a way to share memory with a Pi. The PIO looks great for high speed custom IO, but 100Mb scale interface to/from it is quite hard/unsolved.
boznz 2y ago
This is amazing IP; it makes you wonder if the RPi foundation could be a target for Aquisition by one of the big microcontroller manufacturers.
- spacedcowboy 2y ago
  $deity I hope not. Then we lose the price/performance of these little beauties.
294j59243j 2y ago
But still USB-micro instead of USB-C. Raspberry Picos are literally the one and only reason why I still own any older USB cables.
endorphine 2y ago
Can someone explain what projects this can be used for?
- vardump 2y ago
  It's a pretty generic µC, especially well suited for projects that require high-speed (GP)I/O. It can replace an FPGA in some cases. DSP extensions and FPU support are also decent, so good for robotics, (limited) AI, audio, etc. Also great for learning embedded systems. Very low barrier of entry, just need to download IDE and connect it with an USB cable.
anyfoo 2y ago
> > I was not paid or compensated for this article in any way > However the Raspberry Pi engineer in question WAS compensated for the samples, in the form of a flight over downtown Austin in Dmitry's Cirrus SR22. Hahah, I’ve been in that plane. Only in my case, it was a flight to a steak house in central California, and I didn’t actually do anything to get “compensated”, I was just at the right place at the right time. Anyway, I am extremely excited about this update, RPi are knocking it out of the park. That there is a variant with flash now is a godsend by itself, but the updates to the PIO and DMA engines make me dream up all sorts of projects.
1oooqooq 2y ago
> It overclocks insanely well says the guy with engineering samples and creme of the creme silicon parts... i expect most that will actually be available when they do to their normal schedule of scraping the literal bottom of the barrel to keep their always empty stocks that will not be the case.
- mastax 2y ago
  [flagged]
TheCipster 2y ago
While I completely agree with the content of the post, I still think that QFN packages in general, and RP2350's in particular, are very hobbyist-averse. Moving all GND pins to the bottom pad makes this chip usable only by people with a reflow oven. I really hoped to see at least a version released as (T)QFP.
- dgacmu 2y ago
  Isn't the hobbyist solution to just build a board to which you can attach an entire pico board? That does preclude some things and adds $3, but it makes for a pretty easy prototyping path.
- jsfnaoad 2y ago
  Hard disagree. A TQFP package this dense is still quite challenging for a hobbyist. Just use a breakout board, dev board or get the QFN assembled for you at jlcpcb
- mastax 2y ago
  My reflow oven is a $5 hot plate and a $15 toaster oven. I don’t know if that is very hobbyist averse.
amelius 2y ago
> So, in conclusion, go replan all your STM32H7 projects with RP2350, save money, headaches, and time. Except the STM32H7 series goes up until 600MHz. Overclocking is cool, but you can't do that on most commercial projects.
amelius 2y ago
How easy is it to share memory between two of these processors?
- sounds 2y ago
  Hmm, a 4-core cluster? Easiest would be to wire up two chips with bidirectional links and use a fault handler to transfer small blocks of memory across. You're reimplementing a poor man's MESIF https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31876808 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31876808.
  - amelius 2y ago
    This is something I'd like to see an article about on HN :)
andylinpersonal 2y ago
In terms of security features, it lacks on-the-fly external memory (flash and PSRAM) encryption and decryption as ESP32 and some newer STM32s did. Decrypting by custom OTP bootloader and running entirely in the internal SRAM maybe sometimes limited for larger firmware.
ralferoo 2y ago
I presume the article was edited to change its headline after it was submitted to HN, but it's interesting that it doesn't match up with the HN title. It's still a subjective but positive title, but somehow feels like it has a different tone to the title on HN: HN: "I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350" Article: "Why you should fall in love with the RP2350" title tag: "Introducing the RP2350"
mastax 2y ago
It's a bit surprising that they put so much effort into security for the second microcontroller from a young consumer-oriented* company. My first instinct was to distrust it's security, simply due to lack of experience. However, the "experienced" vendors' secure micros have lots of known security bugs and, more crucially, a demonstrated desire to sweep them under the rug. Two security architecture audits, a $10k bug bounty, and designing a board for glitching as the DEF CON badge shows a pretty big commitment to security. I'm curious about how the Redundancy Coprocessor works. I still wouldn't be surprised if someone breaks it, at least partially. * By perception at least. They have been prioritizing industrial users from a revenue and supply standpoint, it seems.

700 points by elipsitz 2y ago

Taniwha 2y ago

New BusPirate 5XL&6 also dropping today - use the 3250 https://buspirate.com/ https://buspirate.com/

RA2lover 2y ago

Is there any info on the analog capabilities compared to the RP2040?

TomWhitwell 2y ago
Looks like 4 x ADC channels again, no on-board DAC
- RA2lover 2y ago
  the 80-pin version has 8.

elipsitz 2y ago

Can’t find an official announcement or datasheet yet, but according to this post: * 2x Cortex-M33F * improved DMA * more and improved PIO * external PSRAM support * variants with internal flash (2MB) and 80 pins (!) * 512KiB ram (double) * some RISC-V cores? Low power maybe? Looks like a significant jump over the RP2040!

zrail 2y ago
This is pretty exciting. Can't wait for the datasheet!
dave78 2y ago
Pico 2, using the 2350, seems to be announced: https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-pico-2/
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- jsheard 2y ago
  Only $1 more than the original Pico, that's an absolute steal. Although the Pico2 doesn't have PSRAM onboard so there's room for higher end RP235x boards above it.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  Make one in an Arduino Uno form factor and double the price and they'd make a killing :-) I try to dissuade n00bs from starting their arduino journey with the ancient AVR-based devices, but a lot of the peripherals expect to plug into an Uno.
  - moffkalast 2y ago
    Well there's the UNO-R4 Renasas I suppose, but this would be much cooler indeed. There's also the 2040 Connect in the Nano form factor with the extra IMU.
  - ta988 2y ago
    Look at the adafruit metro then. They just announced the rp2350 version
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
repelsteeltje 2y ago
... And RP2354A/B even has 2MB built in flash!
- andylinpersonal 2y ago
  Indeed an in-package winbond flash die though.
  - jacobmarble 2y ago
    Please explain. What is a better alternative that could have been chosen? I’m just happy to have one fewer component on my boards.
    - jercos 2y ago
      Downside is it occupies a CS on the QSPI controller, presumably bonding to the same pads as the QSPI pins on the package, so now you only have one external memory IC. It's a very small tradeoff all things considered, but is still technically a tiny disadvantage over highly integrated MCUs. A potential alternative would have been a directly memory-mapped NOR flash die, but that would have required more bond wires, more dedicated pads on the die, a port on the bus, and on top of that the memory die would have been more expensive too. An older (and often impractical) alternative is to use a single die with both flash and SoC on, in the same process. This usually forces a larger-than-desired process node to match the flash technology, making the SoC take up more space. The result requires no extra bond wires or pads, but now you're really manufacturing a flash chip with an MCU attached.
KaiserPro 2y ago
I'm hoping that its got much better power management. That would be really cool for me.
dgacmu 2y ago
Small (0.5 bits effective) improvement to the ADC also, per the datasheet.

jsheard 2y ago

Speak of the devil: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156743 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41156743 Very nice that the "3" turned out to mean the modern M33 core rather than the much older M3 core. It has a real FPU!

dmitrygr 2y ago
Yes, well-guessed
zedcombination 2y ago
Yes, it's pretty lame that Raspberry Pi has such a "flexible" definition of "low power". i.e. the RP2350 is not low power at all. Looks like Espressif will keep getting my business. What a missed opportunity by RPI.

limpbizkitfan 2y ago

Is there an exhaustive list of stm32h7 errata? Has anyone compiled a defect list?

dmitrygr 2y ago
STM has an inexhaustible list of them, but does not list at least a few QSPI ones that I am aware of. :/
- limpbizkitfan 2y ago
  >:( hoping to play with a pico 2 soon so I can convince my team to move off stm32h7
uticus 2y ago
Apart from official ST documentation [0]? For comparison, RP2350 errata in Appendix E of [1] [0] https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32h745-755/documentation.html https://www.st.com/en/microcontrollers-microprocessors/stm32... [1] https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.p...

zrail 2y ago

Looks like the SDK got updated a couple hours ago: https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/commit/efe2103f9b28458a1615ff096054479743ade236 https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-sdk/commit/efe2103f9b284...

blackkat 2y ago

Some specs here: https://www.digikey.ca/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-sc1631-pico-2 https://www.digikey.ca/en/product-highlight/r/raspberry-pi/r... Based on the RP2350, designed by Raspberry Pi in the United Kingdom Dual Arm M33s at 150 MHz with FPU 520 KiB of SRAM Robust security features (signed boot, OTP, SHA-256, TRNG, glitch detectors and Arm TrustZone for Cortex®-M) Optional, dual RISC-V Hazard3 CPUs at 150 MHz Low-power operation PIO v2 with 3 × programmable I/O co-processors (12 × programmable I/O state machines) for custom peripheral support Support for PSRAM, faster off-chip XIP QSPI Flash interface 4 MB on-board QSPI Flash storage 5 V tolerant GPIOs Open source C/C++ SDK, MicroPython support Software-compatible with Pico 1/RP2040 Drag-and-drop programming using mass storage over USB Castellated module allows soldering directly to carrier boards Footprint- and pin-compatible with Pico 1 (21 mm × 51 mm form factor) 26 multifunction GPIO pins, including three analog inputs Operating temperature: -20°C to +85°C Supported input voltage: 1.8 VDC to 5.5 VDC

synergy20 2y ago
Wow, can't wait. Love the 5V GPIO and security features.
- Daneel_ 2y ago
  5V GPIO is a huge deal for me - this immediately opens up a huge range of integrations without having to worry about line level conversion. I can’t wait to use this!
  - azinman2 2y ago
    Does tolerant mean ok to do? Or it just won’t fry your chip but you should actually run at 3.3?
    - tredre3 2y ago
      It usually means it's clamped so it might result in a small amount of wasted energy/heat but no damage. So yes it means it's okay but if you can you should go for 3.3.

maccam912 2y ago

Can anyone speak about plans for a Pico 2 W (or Pico W 2)? I've been playing around recently with mine and even just syncing with the current time over wifi opens up a lot of possibilities.

coder543 2y ago
Jeff Geerling said the Pico 2 W is coming later this year: https://youtu.be/oXF_lVwA8A4?t=445 https://youtu.be/oXF_lVwA8A4?t=445
MarcScott 2y ago
It's in this post - https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new...

katzinsky 2y ago

I suppose this isn't the first time a company that started out as a hobbiest board manufacturer produced really amazing micro controllers but man is it insane how far they've knocked the ball out of the park.

synergy20 2y ago

You can pick either ARM cores or RISC-V cores on the same die? Never saw design like this before. Will this impact price and power consumption? "The Hazard3 cores are optional: Users can at boot time select a pair of included Arm Cortex-M33 cores to run, or the pair of Hazard3 cores. Both options run at 150 MHz. The more bold could try running one RV and one Arm core together rather than two RV or two Arm. Hazard3 is an open source design, and all the materials for it are here. It's a lightweight three-stage in-order RV32IMACZb* machine, which means it supports the base 32-bit RISC-V ISA with support for multiplication and division in hardware, atomic instructions, bit manipulation, and more."

bri3d 2y ago
This "switchable cores" thing has been appearing in some products for a few years now, for example Sipeed SG2002 (LicheeRV). The area occupied by the actual instruction core is usually pretty small compared to peripherals and internal memories.
- zer00eyz 2y ago
  The MilkV Duo also has this feature I believe... https://milkv.io/duo https://milkv.io/duo
  - Teknoman117 2y ago
    It's the same SoC as the LicheeRV (SG2002)
geerlingguy 2y ago
Apparently (this is news to me), you can also choose to run 1+1 Arm/RISC-V, you don't have to switch both cores either/or. Eben Upton: "They're selectable at boot time: Each port into the bus fabric can be connected either to an M33 or a Hazard3 via a mux. You can even, if you're feeling obtuse, run with one of each." Source: https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/pi_pico_2_risc_v/ https://www.theregister.com/2024/08/08/pi_pico_2_risc_v/

numpad0 2y ago

https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/rp2350/ 4 variants? "A" and "B" variants in QFN60 and QFN80, "2350" and "2354" variants with and without 2MB Flash. CPU can be switched between dual RISC-V @ 150MHz or dual Cortex-M33 @ 300MHz by software or in one-time programming memory(=permanently). Datasheet, core switching details, most of docs are 404 as of now; I guess they didn't have embargo date actually written in `crontab`. e: and datasheet is up!

doe_eyes 2y ago

I think it's a good way to introduce these chips, and it's a great project, but the author's (frankly weird) beef with STM32H7 is detracting from the point they're trying to make: > So, in conclusion, go replan all your STM32H7 projects with RP2350, save money, headaches, and time. STM32H7 chips can run much faster and have a wider selection of peripherals than RP2350. RP2350 excels in some other dimensions, including the number of (heterogenous) cores. Either way, this is nowhere near apples-to-apples. Further, they're not the only Cortex-M7 vendor, so if the conclusion is that STM32H7 sucks (it mostly doesn't), it doesn't follow that you should be instead using Cortex-M33 on RPi. You could be going with Microchip (hobbyist-friendly), NXP (preferred by many commercial buyers), or a number of lesser-known manufacturers.

dmitrygr 2y ago
1. Nobody has a wider selection of peripherals than a chip with 3 PIOs. 2. And my beef is personal - I spent months (MONTHS of my life) debugging the damn H7, only to find a set of huge bugs in the main reason I had been trying to use it (QSPI ram support), showed it to the manufacturer, and had them do nothing. Later they came back and, without admitting i was right about the bugs, said that "another customer is seeing same issues, what was the workaround you said found?" I told them that i'll share the workaround when they admit the problem. Silence since. I fully reserve the right to be pissy at shitty companies in public on my website!
- doe_eyes 2y ago
  I'm not arguing you can't be angry with them, I'm just saying that to me, it detracts from the point about the new platform. Regarding #1, I'm sure you know that peripherals in the MCU world mean more than just digital I/O. Further, even in the digital domain, the reason PIO isn't more popular is that most people don't want to DIY complex communication protocols.
- uticus 2y ago
  [edit: I retract this, I see you’ve had secretly in your possession to play with for over a year. You lucky dog. ] > I have been anti-recommending STM’s chips to everyone for a few years now due to STM’s behaviour with regards to the clearly-demonstrated-to-them hardware issues. You certainly reserve the right. However it is unclear to me why the recommendation to complaints over a months-long period is a product that has just been released. Trying to ask in a very unbiased way since as a hobbyist I’m looking into ST, Microchip, and RP2040. For my part I’ve had two out of four RP2040 come to me dead on arrival, as part of two separate boards from different vendors - one being Pi Pico from Digilent. Not a ton of experience with Microchip but I hear they have their own problems. Nobody’s perfect, the question is how do the options compare.

kaycebasques 2y ago

Official news post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 Official product page: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192269 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192269

kjagiello 2y ago
Datasheet: https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.pdf https://datasheets.raspberrypi.com/rp2350/rp2350-datasheet.p...
dang 2y ago
Thanks! Macroexpanded: Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 - Aug 2024 (71 comments)

jonathrg 2y ago

Can someone explain the benefit of having essentially 4 cores (2 ARM + 2 RISC-V) on the chip but only having 2 able to run simultaneously? Does this take significantly less die space than having all 4 available at all times?

dmitrygr 2y ago
cores are high bandwidth bus masters. Making a crossbar that supports 5 high bandwidth masters (4x core + dma) is likely harder, larger, and higher power than one that supports 3.
- ebenupton 2y ago
  It's actually 10 masters (I+D for 4 cores + DMA read + DMA write) versus 6 masters. Or you could pre-arbitrate each pair of I and each pair of D ports. But even there the timing impact is unpalatable.
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    Which is even more impressive yet :)
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coder543 2y ago
Coordinating access to the memory bus and peripherals is probably not easy to do when the cores weren’t ever designed to work together. Doing so could require a power/performance penalty at all times, even though most users are unlikely to want to deal with two completely different architectures across four cores on one microcontroller. Having both architectures available is a cool touch. I believe I criticized the original RP2040 for not being bold enough to go RISC-V, but now they’re offering users the choice. I’ll be very curious to see how the two cores compare… I suspect the ARM cores will probably be noticeably better in this case.

mmmlinux 2y ago

And still no USB C on the official devboard.

jsheard 2y ago
There's plenty of alternatives right out of the gate, at least: https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/powered-by/product-catalogue/?category=RP2350 https://www.raspberrypi.com/for-industry/powered-by/product-... Pimoroni has a maxed-out pin-compatible version with 16MB flash, 8MB PSRAM, and USB-C: https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pimoroni-pico-plus-2 https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/pimoroni-pico-plus-2
- moffkalast 2y ago
  Unless the USB-C connector costs $7-10, these are beyond ridiculously overpriced compared to the official dev board. At least throw in an IMU or something if you plan to sell low volumes at high prices jeez.
  - jsheard 2y ago
    The cheapest one I've seen so far is the XIAO RP2350, which is $5, same as the official Pico board. I'm sure there will be more cheap options once more Chinese manufacturers get their hands on the chips, no-name USB-C RP2040 boards are ridiculously cheap.
naikrovek 2y ago
> And still no USB C on the official devboard. Do you live in a universe where micro-USB cables are not available, or something? There's gonna be something or other that needs micro-USB for the next decade, so just buy a few and move on. They're not expensive. [later edit: I bet it has to do with backwards compatibility. They don't want people to need to rework case designs to use something that is meant as a drop-in replacement for the Pi Pico 1.]
- ewoodrich 2y ago

kvemkon 2y ago

> 1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support Sure, after integrating USB 2.0 HS or 1Gb-Ethernet the pico2-board will cost more than $5. So, integrated high-speed interfacing with PC was not a nice-to-have option (for special chip flavor)?

solidninja 2y ago
I think the target here is low-power peripherals rather than speedy peripherals, and the price is very nice for that :)
- kvemkon 2y ago
  Here [1] someone asked to make RP1 I/O chip available, but actually RP2350 is what would fit the purpose. [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/rp1-the-silicon-controlling-raspberry-pi-5-i-o-designed-here-at-raspberry-pi/#comment-1594799 https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/rp1-the-silicon-controlling...
rasz 2y ago
>USB 2.0 HS 480 Mbps SERDES > or 1Gb-Ethernet 1.25 Gbps SERDES
- kvemkon 2y ago
  RP1 I/O chip on RPi5 has so many high-speed interfaces. I've been thinking RP2350 could be some smart I/O chip for a PC/notebook/network attached computers (with only 1 necessary high-speed connection).
- namibj 2y ago
  GigE is actually PAM-4 at ~250 MBaud.
  - kvemkon 2y ago
    1.25 Gbps would be needed for low-pin-count SGMII interface to a PHY chip.

tecleandor 2y ago

Not off topic but a bit tangentially... How difficult would be emulating an old SRAM chip with an RP2040 or an RP2350? It's an early 80s (or older) 2048 word, 200ns access time CMOS SRAM that is used to save presets on an old Casio synth. It's not a continuous memory read, it just reads when loading the preset to memory. I feel like PIO would be perfect for that.

bogantech 2y ago
For that you could just some FRAM with minimal effort https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/877-FM16W08-SG https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/877-FM16W08-SG
dmitrygr 2y ago
I did that, not just SRAM but also ROM, to fool a MC68EZ328 successfully. It works well. PIO + DMA does it well. Specifically i replaced rom & ram in an old Palm Pilot with an RP2040: https://photos.app.goo.gl/KabVe5CrfckqnFEt7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/KabVe5CrfckqnFEt7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGAkp6HoYAJc3Uft7 https://photos.app.goo.gl/LGAkp6HoYAJc3Uft7 Edit: I did not yet update the rePalm article but much about that is in the Palm discord. https://discord.gg/qs8wQ4Bf https://discord.gg/qs8wQ4Bf see #repalm-project channel
- tecleandor 2y ago
  Ooooh, that looks cool and the PCB seems simple (at least from this side). Congrats! Do you have anything published?
- alfanick 2y ago
  Pokemon are nice touch here
HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
If it's not an academic question and you have an actual need for the SRAM, what's the p/n? I have some old parts stock and may have what you need.

swetland 2y ago

Lots of nice improvements here. The RISC-V RV32I option is nice -- so many RV32 MCUs have absurdly tiny amounts of SRAM and very limited peripherals. The Cortex M33s are a biiig upgrade from the M0+s in the RP2040. Real atomic operations. An FPU. I'm exited.

guenthert 2y ago
Many people seem excited about the FPU. Could you help me understand what hardware floating point support is needed in a MCU for? I remember DSPs using (awkward word-size) fixed point arithmetic.
- jercos 2y ago
  I think you highlight the exact issue rather well... fixed-point DSP instructions are awkward to use. The FPU and the double-precision hardware with its baked operations work with IEEE floats out of the box, so the programmer can be "lazy." A thousand new programmers can write something like `* 0.7` in C++ inside a tight loop without it stealing 200 instructions from the timing of the rest of the program.

fouronnes3 2y ago

Curious about the low-power and sleep mode improvements!

geerlingguy 2y ago
Me too; I had a little trouble with MicroPython lightsleep and deepsleep in the pre-release version I was testing. I will re-test and try to get better sleep state in my code either today or tomorrow!

bschwindHN 2y ago

Alright, what's the max image resolution/framerate someone is going to pump out with the HSTX peripheral?

spacedcowboy 2y ago
Unfortunately the starter example [1] hasn't made it into the public tree (yet ?) [1] https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/blob/master/dvi_out_hstx_encoder https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/blob/master/dvi...
- bschwindHN 2y ago
  I wonder what other uses people will find for it. It's one-way data transfer, I wonder if it could be hooked up to a USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 peripheral, or an ethernet PHY, or something else.
  - spacedcowboy 2y ago
    Pretty sure I'm going to link it up with an FPGA at some point - as long as the data is unidirectional, this is a promise of 2400 Mbit/sec - which for a $1 microcontroller is insane. If it overclocks like the processor, you're up to 4800 MBit/sec ... stares into the distance I can use PIO in the other direction, but this has DDR, so you'll never get the same performance. It's a real shame they didn't make it bi-directional, but maybe the use-case here is (as hinted by the fact it can do TMDS internally) for DVI out. If they had make it bidirectional, I could see networks of these little microcontrollers transmitting/receiving at gigabit rates... Taken together with PIO, XMOS would have to sit up straight pretty quickly...
    - bschwindHN 2y ago
      Right? Bidirectional capability at those speeds would be incredible for the price of this chip. Either way, still looking forward to see what people cook up with it, and hopefully I'll find a use for it as well. Maybe combine it with some cheap 1920x1080 portable monitors to have some beautiful dashboards around the house or something...

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

SethTro 2y ago

This has 2 of the 3 features (float support, faster clock) + more POI that was keeping me on ESP32. For projects that need wifi, and can tolerate the random interrupts, I'll stick with ESP32.

jononor 2y ago

Aha, the 3 is for M33, not Cortex M3 (as some speculated based on the name). That makes a lot more sense! Integrated FPU is a big improvement over the RP2040, and M33 is a modern but proven core.

gchadwick 2y ago

This looks awesome a really great step up from the RP2040. I'm a big fan of the original and I'm excited to see all the improvements and upgrades. I imagine with the new secure boot functionality they've got a huge new range of customers to tempt to. Also exciting to see them dip their toe into the open silicon waters with the hazard 3 RISCV core https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3 https://github.com/Wren6991/Hazard3. Of course it they'd used Ibex https://github.com/lowrisc/ibex https://github.com/lowrisc/ibex the RISC-V core we develop and maintain at lowRISC that would have been even better but you can't have everything ;)

rowanG077 2y ago

Would the pio now support sane Ethernet using rmii for example?

rscott2049 2y ago
I'm assuming you've looked at the pico-rmii-ethernet library? If so, I feel your pain - I've been fixing issues, and am about halfway done. (This is for the DECstation2040 project, available on github). Look for a release in late aug/early sep. (Maybe with actual lance code? Dmitry??) The RP2350 will make RMII slightly easier - the endless DMA allows elimination of the DMA reload channel(s).
- rowanG077 2y ago
  I looked at it and dismissed it as too hacky for production. I don't remember the real reason why. I would have to look through my notes. The main question is whether the RP2350 will change that. As in it actually possible to do bug free without weird hacks.
  - rscott2049 2y ago
    Agreed. I re-wrote the Rx PIO routine to do a proper interrupt at EOF, and added a DMA driven ring buffer, which eliminated a lot of the hackiness...

nimish 2y ago

Gross, the dev board uses micro-USB. It's 2024! Otherwise amazing work. Exactly what's needed to compete with the existing giants.

sowbug 2y ago
Perhaps the unfortunate choice of micro USB is to discourage real consumer products from being built with the dev board.
- user_7832 2y ago
  I wonder if it is more about simply shaving a few cents off. Full USB-C protocol implementation may be much more difficult.
  - hypercube33 2y ago
    USB-C doesn't require anything special USB wise as it's decoupled from the versioned standard. It just has more pins and works with all modern cables. Ideally the cables won't wear out like Mini and Micro and get loosey goosey in the ports.
    - ewoodrich 2y ago
      Yep, a USB-C connector is more or less a drop in replacement for MicroUSB if you don’t need USB3 or USB-PD. With one aggravating exception: it requires adding two 5.1kΩ pulldown resistors to be compatible with C-C cables. Thus signaling to a charger that the sink is a legacy non-PD device requesting 5V. Which is apparently an impossible ask for manufacturers of dev boards or cheap devices in general. It’s slightly more understandable for a tried and true dev board that’s just been connector swapped to USB-C (and I’ll happily take it over dealing with Micro) but inexcusable for a new design. My hope is Apple going USB-C only on all their charging bricks and now even C-C cables for the iPhone will eventually force Chinese OEMs to build standard compliant designs. Or deal with a 50% Amazon return rate for “broken no power won’t charge”.
    - 2y ago

ChrisArchitect 2y ago

Related: Raspberry Pi Pico 2, our new $5 microcontroller board, on sale now https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41192341

weinzierl 2y ago

This is fantastic news. Is there information on power consumption? This is something that precludes a good deal of use cases for the RP2040 unfortunately and any improvements here would be good, but maybe the RP's are just not made for ultra low power?

ebenupton 2y ago
Significant improvements to flat-out power (switcher vs LDO) and to idle power (low quiescent current LDO for retention). Still not a coin-cell device, but heading in the right direction.

TaylorAlexander 2y ago

This is very exciting! For the last several years I have been developing a brushless motor driver based on the RP2040 [1]. The driver module can handle up to 53 volts at 30A continuous, 50A peak. I broke the driver out to a separate module recently which is helpful for our farm robot and is also important for driver testing as we improve the design. However this rev seems pretty solid, so I might build a single board low cost integrated single motor driver with the RP2350 soon! With the RP2040 the loop rate was 8khz which is totally fine for big farm robot drive motors, but some high performance drivers with floating point do 50khz loop rate. My board runs SimpleFOC, and people on the forum have been talking about building a flagship design, but they need support for sensorless control as well as floating point, so if I use the new larger pinout variant of the RP2350 with 8 ADC pins, we can measure three current signals and three bridge voltages to make a nice sensorless driver! It will be a few months before I can have a design ready, but follow the git repo or my twitter profile [2] if you would like to stay up to date! [1] https://github.com/tlalexander/rp2040-motor-controller https://github.com/tlalexander/rp2040-motor-controller [2] https://twitter.com/TLAlexander https://twitter.com/TLAlexander

sgu999 2y ago
> for our farm robot That peaked my interest, here's the video for those who want to save a few clicks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFhTPHlPAAk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fFhTPHlPAAk I absolutely love that they use bike parts for the feet and wheels.
- HeyLaughingBoy 2y ago
  I have given some thought to a two-wheeled electric tractor for dealing with mud -- horse paddocks turn into basically a 1-foot deep slurry after heavy rain and it can be easier to deal with something small that sinks through the mud, down to solid ground than something using large floatation tires. Additional problem with large tires is that they tend to throw mud around, making everyone nearby even more dirty. I haven't actually built anything (been paying attention to Taylor's work, though), but I came to the same conclusion that bike wheels & tires would probably be a good choice. It also doesn't hurt that we have many discarded kids' bikes all over the place.

brcmthrowaway 2y ago

Why would I pick this over esp32 if I need to get shit done

ryukoposting 2y ago

I can't imagine someone using an RP2040 in a real product, but the RP2350 fixes enough of my complaints that I'd be really excited to give it a shot. There's a lot going for the 2040, don't get me wrong. TBMAN is a really cool concept. It overclocks like crazy. PIO is truly innovative, and it's super valuable for boatloads of companies looking to replace their 8051s/whatever with a daughterboard-adapted ARM core. But, for every cool thing about the RP2040, there was a bad thing. DSP-level clock speeds but no FPU, and no hardware integer division. A USB DFU function embedded in boot ROM is flatly undesirable in an MCU with no memory protection. PIO support is extremely limited in third-party SDKs like Zephyr, which puts a low ceiling on its usefulness in large-scale projects. The RP2350 fixes nearly all of my complaints, and that's really exciting. PIO is a really cool concept, but relying on it to implement garden-variety peripherals like CAN or SDMMC immediately puts RP2350 at a disadvantage. The flexibility is very cool, but if I need to get a product up and running, the last thing I want to do is fiddle around with a special-purpose assembly language. My hope is that they'll eventually provide a library of ready-made "soft peripherals" for common things like SD/MMC, MII, Bluetooth HCI, etc. That would make integration into Zephyr (and friends) easier, and it would massively expand the potential use cases for the chip.

petra 2y ago
For high volume products, given the low cost of this chip, it would make sense to bother with the PIO or it's open-source libraries.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
TaylorAlexander 2y ago
> My hope is that they'll eventually provide a library of ready-made "soft peripherals" Perhaps they could be more ready-made, but there are loads of official PIO examples that are easy to get started with. https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/tree/master/pio https://github.com/raspberrypi/pico-examples/tree/master/pio
- ryukoposting 2y ago

jackwilsdon 2y ago

I'm most excited for the partition and address translation support - partitions can be mapped to the same address for A/B boot slots (and it supports "try before you buy" to boot into a slot temporarily). No more compiling two copies for the A and B slots (at different addresses)!

vardump 2y ago

RP2040 had Doom ported to it. https://kilograham.github.io/rp2040-doom/ https://kilograham.github.io/rp2040-doom/ RP2350 looks very much like it could potentially run Quake. Heck, some of the changes almost feel like they're designed for this purpose. FPU, two cores at 150 MHz, overclockable beyond 300 MHz and it supports up to 16 MB of PSRAM with hardware R/W paging support.

chipxsd 2y ago
While outputting DVI! I wouldn't be surprised.
- rvense 2y ago
  Mouser have 64 megabyte PSRAMs. I really want a Mac System 7 grade operating system for this chip...
  - dmitrygr 2y ago
    No they do not. 64megabit
    - rvense 2y ago
      Did you bother to check? It's octal, not QSPI, so I don't know if it's compatible. (edit - and 1.8V, inconvenient)
      - andylinpersonal 2y ago
        Octal PSRAM usually cannot fallback to quad mode like some octal flash did.
        rvense 2y ago
        Actually reading the datasheet[1] it doesn't look like it. [1] https://www.mouser.dk/datasheet/2/1127/APM_PSRAM_OPI_Xccela_APS25608N_OBRx_v1_0_PKG-1954871.pdf https://www.mouser.dk/datasheet/2/1127/APM_PSRAM_OPI_Xccela_...

v1ne 2y ago

Hmm, it's really nice that they fixed so many complaints. But honestly, reading the errata sheet, I had to chuckle that Dmitry didn't tear this chip to pieces. I mean, there's erratums about obscure edge cases, about miniscule bugs. Sure, mistakes happen. And then there's this: Internal pull-downs don't work reliably. Workaround: Disconnect digital input and only connect while you're reading the value. Well, great! Now it takes 3 instructions to read data from a port, significantly reducing the rate at which you can read data! I guess it's just rare to have pull-downs, so that's naturally mitigating the issue a bit.

colejohnson66 2y ago
You can also use external resistors.

urbandw311er 2y ago

I absolutely love this guy’s enthusiasm.

kaycebasques 2y ago

Big day for my team (Pigweed)! Some of our work got mentioned in the main RP2350/Pico2 announcement [1] but for many months we've been working on a new end-to-end SDK [2] built on top of Bazel [3] with support for both RP2040 and RP2350, including upstreaming Bazel support to the Pico SDK. Our new "Tour of Pigweed" [4] shows a bunch of Pigweed features working together in a single codebase, e.g. hermetic builds, on-device unit tests, RPC-centric comms, factory-at-your-desk testing, etc. We're over in our Discord [5] if you've got any questions [1] https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new-5-microcontroller-board-on-sale-now/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/raspberry-pi-pico-2-our-new... [2] https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/08/introducing-pigweed-sdk.html https://opensource.googleblog.com/2024/08/introducing-pigwee... [3] https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html [4] https://pigweed.dev/docs/showcases/sense/ https://pigweed.dev/docs/showcases/sense/ [5] https://discord.gg/M9NSeTA https://discord.gg/M9NSeTA

dheera 2y ago
I hate Bazel. A build system for C/C++ should not require a Java JVM. Please keep Java out of microcontroller ecosystem please -__--
- jaeckel 2y ago
  And only discord on top, but maybe I'm simply not hip enough
  - kaycebasques 2y ago
    I forwarded your feedback to the team and we are now vigorously debating which other comms channels we can all live with
- kaycebasques 2y ago
  We realize Bazel is not the right build system for every embedded project. The "Bazel for Embedded" post that came out today (we co-authored it) talks more about why we find Bazel so compelling: https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html https://blog.bazel.build/2024/08/08/bazel-for-embedded.html

boznz 2y ago

> I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350 I got all mine, these guys really listened to the (minor) criticisms of the RP2040 on their forums and knocked them out of the ball park. Cant wait to get my hands on real hardware. Well done guys

ebenupton 2y ago
Thank you. It's been a major effort from the team, and I'm very proud of what they've accomplished.
- vardump 2y ago
  Thanks for a great product! A (small?) ask. Can we have instruction timings please? Like how many cycles SMLAL (signed multiply long, with accumulate) takes? Will there be an official development board with all 48 GPIOs exposed?
  - ebenupton 2y ago
    Cortex-M33 timings aren't documented, but one of our security consultants has made a lot of progress reverse engineering them to support his work on trace stacking for differential power analysis of our AES implementation. I've asked him to write this up to go in a future rev of the datasheet. No official 48 GPIO board, I think: this is slightly intentional because it creates market space for our partners to do something.
    - vardump 2y ago
      > I've asked him to write this up to go in a future rev of the datasheet. Thanks!

begriffs 2y ago

I see CMSIS definitions for the RP2040 at https://github.com/raspberrypi/CMSIS-RP2xxx-DFP https://github.com/raspberrypi/CMSIS-RP2xxx-DFP but none for RP2350. Maybe they'll eventually appear in that repo, given its name is RP2xxx? I thought vendors are legally obligated to provide CMSIS definitions when they license an ARM core.

tibbon 2y ago

Thanks for making the DEF CON badge! 10000x cooler than last year

hashtag-til 2y ago

The disclaimer is brutally honest. I love it.

GeorgeTirebiter 2y ago

What is the process node used? Who is fabbing this for them? Given that the new chip is bigger, my guess is the same (old) process node is being used. RP2040 is manufactured on a 40nm process node. Whoops, I read the fine print: RP2350 is manufactured on a 40nm process node.

ckemere 2y ago

I wish there was a way to share memory with a Pi. The PIO looks great for high speed custom IO, but 100Mb scale interface to/from it is quite hard/unsolved.

boznz 2y ago

This is amazing IP; it makes you wonder if the RPi foundation could be a target for Aquisition by one of the big microcontroller manufacturers.

spacedcowboy 2y ago
$deity I hope not. Then we lose the price/performance of these little beauties.

294j59243j 2y ago

But still USB-micro instead of USB-C. Raspberry Picos are literally the one and only reason why I still own any older USB cables.

endorphine 2y ago

Can someone explain what projects this can be used for?

vardump 2y ago
It's a pretty generic µC, especially well suited for projects that require high-speed (GP)I/O. It can replace an FPGA in some cases. DSP extensions and FPU support are also decent, so good for robotics, (limited) AI, audio, etc. Also great for learning embedded systems. Very low barrier of entry, just need to download IDE and connect it with an USB cable.

anyfoo 2y ago

> > I was not paid or compensated for this article in any way > However the Raspberry Pi engineer in question WAS compensated for the samples, in the form of a flight over downtown Austin in Dmitry's Cirrus SR22. Hahah, I’ve been in that plane. Only in my case, it was a flight to a steak house in central California, and I didn’t actually do anything to get “compensated”, I was just at the right place at the right time. Anyway, I am extremely excited about this update, RPi are knocking it out of the park. That there is a variant with flash now is a godsend by itself, but the updates to the PIO and DMA engines make me dream up all sorts of projects.

1oooqooq 2y ago

> It overclocks insanely well says the guy with engineering samples and creme of the creme silicon parts... i expect most that will actually be available when they do to their normal schedule of scraping the literal bottom of the barrel to keep their always empty stocks that will not be the case.

mastax 2y ago
[flagged]

TheCipster 2y ago

While I completely agree with the content of the post, I still think that QFN packages in general, and RP2350's in particular, are very hobbyist-averse. Moving all GND pins to the bottom pad makes this chip usable only by people with a reflow oven. I really hoped to see at least a version released as (T)QFP.

dgacmu 2y ago
Isn't the hobbyist solution to just build a board to which you can attach an entire pico board? That does preclude some things and adds $3, but it makes for a pretty easy prototyping path.
jsfnaoad 2y ago
Hard disagree. A TQFP package this dense is still quite challenging for a hobbyist. Just use a breakout board, dev board or get the QFN assembled for you at jlcpcb
mastax 2y ago
My reflow oven is a $5 hot plate and a $15 toaster oven. I don’t know if that is very hobbyist averse.

amelius 2y ago

> So, in conclusion, go replan all your STM32H7 projects with RP2350, save money, headaches, and time. Except the STM32H7 series goes up until 600MHz. Overclocking is cool, but you can't do that on most commercial projects.

amelius 2y ago

How easy is it to share memory between two of these processors?

sounds 2y ago
Hmm, a 4-core cluster? Easiest would be to wire up two chips with bidirectional links and use a fault handler to transfer small blocks of memory across. You're reimplementing a poor man's MESIF https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31876808 https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31876808.
- amelius 2y ago
  This is something I'd like to see an article about on HN :)

andylinpersonal 2y ago

In terms of security features, it lacks on-the-fly external memory (flash and PSRAM) encryption and decryption as ESP32 and some newer STM32s did. Decrypting by custom OTP bootloader and running entirely in the internal SRAM maybe sometimes limited for larger firmware.

ralferoo 2y ago

I presume the article was edited to change its headline after it was submitted to HN, but it's interesting that it doesn't match up with the HN title. It's still a subjective but positive title, but somehow feels like it has a different tone to the title on HN: HN: "I got almost all of my wishes granted with RP2350" Article: "Why you should fall in love with the RP2350" title tag: "Introducing the RP2350"

mastax 2y ago

It's a bit surprising that they put so much effort into security for the second microcontroller from a young consumer-oriented* company. My first instinct was to distrust it's security, simply due to lack of experience. However, the "experienced" vendors' secure micros have lots of known security bugs and, more crucially, a demonstrated desire to sweep them under the rug. Two security architecture audits, a $10k bug bounty, and designing a board for glitching as the DEF CON badge shows a pretty big commitment to security. I'm curious about how the Redundancy Coprocessor works. I still wouldn't be surprised if someone breaks it, at least partially. * By perception at least. They have been prioritizing industrial users from a revenue and supply standpoint, it seems.