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.

I kind of wish these all weren't called ESP32. ESP8266 and ESP8285 -> ESP32 made sense, but now we have 10+ different versions with different features and different architectures.

Kind of like how in every thread involving a Raspberry Pi Pico (RP2030/RP2350), there's always someone confusing it with the single board computer version.

The ESP32 (Classic, usually WROOM-32E) is still usually what comes to mind when I hear ESP32.

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.

From the datasheet, I see that there is a Bitscrambler peripheral that seems to be very similar in flexibility to the Raspberry Pi Pico's PIO:

> Since bitwise operations can be relatively CPU-intensive and DMA is designed specifically to offload such work from the CPU, ESP32-S31 integrates two dedicated peripherals called BitScramblers. These modules are designed to transform data formats during transfers between memory and peripherals. One BitScrambler handles memory-to-peripheral (or memory-to-memory) transfers, while the other is dedicated to peripheral-to-memory transfers. While BitScramblers can handle the bitwise operations mentioned earlier, they are in fact flexible, programmable state machines capable of performing more advanced transformations as well.

Here's hoping that it's as useful as the Pi Pico's PIO

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...

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.

Previous discussion from two months ago, when this was announced: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47561678

Great to hear the adoption of RISC-V across the ESP32 line. The old Xtensa-based parts were fine, but RISC-V should make tooling, compiler support, and long-term ecosystem work cleaner

I'm the maintainer of a standalone printf library, targeting mostly embedded devices and other no-standard-library use cases:

https://github.com/eyalroz/printf/

I would like to make sure the library can be used on this SoC, and other RISC-V systems; which it probably can, but if there are any issues cross-compiling for it, or using the toolchain Espressif provides, please consider filing a bug report on GitHub at the link above. Same of course goes for any FOSS librar/tool that you're trying out.

Let's help foster a rich(er) ecosystem of software available on these babies!

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?

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?

These little devices are extremely interesting. I have a side project I will one day get started - to place 32 SoCs (or fewer SoCs with more cores), connect them via PCB traces to an ethernet hub (I need to learn how to do that), and leave one or more "upstream" network ports for connecting multiple boards together. Each core would light up a red LED on the front-side of the board via 90-degree LED holders.

Then I'd pack 16 of them, and build a tiny Connection Machine cube.

Not sure what I'd use a cluster of 512 very puny servers for though... I guess it'd be for learning how to manage clusters with unreasonable numbers of nodes.

This is so sick except it only has 2 pulse counters instead of the 4 on the S3 which means I can't use it as a drop in replacement on my current project. Not really complaining, I cut my teeth as an embedded dev on the ESP8266 and for years now all of my personal projects (and a fair few professional ones) have been based on the ESP32 line of chips. They're all pretty incredible for the cost, absolutely my favorite embedded target.

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.

I very much respect Espressif products, specially because how good their documentation is. I wish though somebody would package an ESP board with 256 Mb of RAM or more... From what I've seen, that amount of RAM seems to be exclusive Linux SBC territory, but Linux doesn't make sense for a lot of projects.

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.

Also 4x MCPWM peripherals; that's a first for any Espressif MCU.

The additional GPIOs are very welcome as well. CAN-FD!

This device is going to be a big hit for Espressif.

> ESP32-S31 is particularly well suited for edge AI and machine learning workloads, including neural network inference

Any way to know what kind of performance one could expect running e.g. a depth anything model on there?

It's sad to see Xtensa go. Their architecture was a clean design, a treat to read the assembly code. I get it, RISC-V comes without licensing costs, but that's one of the few positive things about it. For a fresh start, it is just already in this "we pile stuff on stuff on stuff" state that you expect of an architecture after 10-20 years of productive use.

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

The 1GB bandwidth is interesting. It also has Simd instructions too.

Could this theoretically be used as a router or wireguard vpn instance?

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?

I personally am itching for more hardware H.264 or even H.265. There's the ESP32-P4 but it requires a second ESP32 to handle the WiFi. I got it working, but it feels like a hack, and the BOM cost is more than 2x a single chip.

Course more PSRAM and hardware encoding would drive up the price...

Love to see more RISC-V in the wild

I wish Espressif was an American company and publicly traded. I'd invest heavily. I have nothing but good things to say about their products.

Their product naming could be better; S3 is going to show S31 in the search results.

> Bluetooth 5.4 LE Audio enables high-quality, low-power streaming with LC3 codec and multi-stream audio

finally i can make party mode home speaker arrays

Meanwhile, Texas Instruments[0]...

0. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48378136

It's good news Espressif is using RISC-V over something like Xtensa; it's much more open and flexible. Excited to play around with this

When can we buy these?

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

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

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