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It's incredibly refreshing to see them pricing these at volume costs for non-volume buyers. The insane component prices that we pay in the US for lower volume

by jmole 2y ago

It's incredibly refreshing to see them pricing these at volume costs for non-volume buyers. The insane component prices that we pay in the US for lower volume electronics manufacturing are killing innovation and driving manufacturing to countries with actual price competition. Looking on Digikey/Mouser, you'll find that other MCUs with a similar spec are selling for at least $4-5 at qty 3000+. The RP2350 price is a lot closer to what a large volume buyer would pay for MCUs like this, and still appears to have a healthy margin on top of the cost of dies, packaging, test, etc.

Onavo 2y ago
Nothing refreshing about this. Their mid range Raspberry Pi Zero used to be $5, now they are giving you an underpowered microcontroller for the same price. You can get Pico 2 sized individual boards for less than $2 in Asia.
- jmole 2y ago
  The MCU is $0.80 - $1.10. $1.10 for a dual core Cortex-M33 with 2MB flash and 512KB is a bargain in 2024 compared to other MCUs available at this time, at least in terms of prices that you'll be able to get as a regular consumer in the US. The only other chip that even comes close is the ESP32.
dragontamer 2y ago
I disagree. Small uC is almost entirely about peripherals and RP2040 and RP2350 barely have any peripherals worth talking about. It's always a weird strategy to me. Rasp. Pi foundation makes a bare bones no-frills chip (most models missing even Flash, fortunately RP2354 has Flash finally) in a field where processing power is not the focus. MPUs like SAMA5D27 are sub $10 and Linux capable and are still a bad Processing Power per $$$ point because Rasp Pi 5 exists which is bad because AMD Epic exists. If we go down the processing power chain, we simply end up in Server Land. The traditional use of uCs is to simplify circuit design by having one chip do 90% of any given project. Running BLDC motors? STM32 has BLDC motor uC that handles the 250V or 600V needed. (EDIT: STSPIN32F0602) You don't need much more than a Cortex-M0+ to drive BLDC either, so all the extra processing power of RP2350 is wasted. --------- RP2350 is very MPU-ish to me. It requires additional components and reviewers who love it praise features like PSRAM compatibility and talk about how Flash is cheap anyway. But that ignores that your typical uC doesn't need any external anything aside from maybe Xtals for communication.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  Adding to my earlier post.... I think RP2xxx is best for screens and GUIs. So a game console and similar. PIO looks like it's good for a lot of digital interfaces as well. I know DVI and VGA have been proven on PIO for example and there's probably all kinds of 80s and 90s chips that need emulators or replacements that RP2xxx would be good for. So there is definitely a niche for RP2xxx chips. But it's not in power control, motor control or the like. And since it's not quite strong enough for Linux, it's a hassle to run Web Communications (wget/curl) off of it either. ------ But traditionally, game consoles were an MPU market not a microcontroller market. And if I were making a modern hobby game console, Linux capabilities would be on the top of my list to make everything more convenient. And it's really not that expensive these days to reach into proper Linux / DDR2 / NAND Flash.
- Yoofie 2y ago
  > RP2354 has Flash finally The flash is QSPI, so its not really on die flash with a real flash controller. There is some QSPI cache but it’s really a band-aid solution to not having the real thing. People around the net don't seem to understand the difference and it can be very misleading.
  - dragontamer 2y ago
    Hmmm, could you elaborate? So I know that RP2xxx doesn't execute out of flash ever. I'm pretty sure the architecture of this is all execute out of SRAM. Im pretty sure RP2040 copies out of QSPI and then executes in SRAM, but I'm not entirely sure what the downsides of this could be. I'm guessing there might be security implications?
- jmole 2y ago
  I don't think the Raspberry Pi foundation needs to focus on direct IGBT drive, and there are a lot more tasks in the world than driving BLDC motors. And yes, there are plenty of highly-specialized microcontrollers that serve a variety of industry niches quite well. But look at the competitors from ST in RP2354A price bracket of ~$1: RP2354A, $1 at whatever quantity: Dual 150 MHz CM33, 2MB flash, 520KB SRAM STM32F103, $0.99 at Qty 1K from LCSC: 72 MHz CM3, 128KB flash, 20KB SRAM. STM32L431, $0.98 at Qty 1K from LCSC: 80 MHz CM4, 256KB flash, 64KB SRAM. There are several ST clones from China that are offering a bit more SRAM, a bit higher clock speeds or slightly more flash, like 512KB, but nothing even comes close to the RP2350. PIO more than makes up for the lack of any digital-specific interface that you think you're missing, not to mention you have an entire extra core just sitting around that you could use to bit-bang whatever crazy interface you decide that you need. The main area where they are significantly lagging their price-matched competitors is the ADC, and analog in general. I suspect that they are prioritizing limited die area for compute over large analog blocks that are hard to characterize and design on whatever process Sony is giving them. And if you really need certain specific peripherals (and low-power doesn't matter to you) - capacitive/inductive sensing, DACs, etc., you're almost better off buying a low-spec ultra cheap MCU with the features you need, and then running it as a peripheral to the RP2350. I honestly don't think there's a better price/performance chip out there right now.

by jmole 2y ago

Onavo 2y ago

Nothing refreshing about this. Their mid range Raspberry Pi Zero used to be $5, now they are giving you an underpowered microcontroller for the same price. You can get Pico 2 sized individual boards for less than $2 in Asia.

jmole 2y ago
The MCU is $0.80 - $1.10. $1.10 for a dual core Cortex-M33 with 2MB flash and 512KB is a bargain in 2024 compared to other MCUs available at this time, at least in terms of prices that you'll be able to get as a regular consumer in the US. The only other chip that even comes close is the ESP32.

dragontamer 2y ago

I disagree. Small uC is almost entirely about peripherals and RP2040 and RP2350 barely have any peripherals worth talking about. It's always a weird strategy to me. Rasp. Pi foundation makes a bare bones no-frills chip (most models missing even Flash, fortunately RP2354 has Flash finally) in a field where processing power is not the focus. MPUs like SAMA5D27 are sub $10 and Linux capable and are still a bad Processing Power per $$$ point because Rasp Pi 5 exists which is bad because AMD Epic exists. If we go down the processing power chain, we simply end up in Server Land. The traditional use of uCs is to simplify circuit design by having one chip do 90% of any given project. Running BLDC motors? STM32 has BLDC motor uC that handles the 250V or 600V needed. (EDIT: STSPIN32F0602) You don't need much more than a Cortex-M0+ to drive BLDC either, so all the extra processing power of RP2350 is wasted. --------- RP2350 is very MPU-ish to me. It requires additional components and reviewers who love it praise features like PSRAM compatibility and talk about how Flash is cheap anyway. But that ignores that your typical uC doesn't need any external anything aside from maybe Xtals for communication.

dragontamer 2y ago
Adding to my earlier post.... I think RP2xxx is best for screens and GUIs. So a game console and similar. PIO looks like it's good for a lot of digital interfaces as well. I know DVI and VGA have been proven on PIO for example and there's probably all kinds of 80s and 90s chips that need emulators or replacements that RP2xxx would be good for. So there is definitely a niche for RP2xxx chips. But it's not in power control, motor control or the like. And since it's not quite strong enough for Linux, it's a hassle to run Web Communications (wget/curl) off of it either. ------ But traditionally, game consoles were an MPU market not a microcontroller market. And if I were making a modern hobby game console, Linux capabilities would be on the top of my list to make everything more convenient. And it's really not that expensive these days to reach into proper Linux / DDR2 / NAND Flash.
Yoofie 2y ago
> RP2354 has Flash finally The flash is QSPI, so its not really on die flash with a real flash controller. There is some QSPI cache but it’s really a band-aid solution to not having the real thing. People around the net don't seem to understand the difference and it can be very misleading.
- dragontamer 2y ago
  Hmmm, could you elaborate? So I know that RP2xxx doesn't execute out of flash ever. I'm pretty sure the architecture of this is all execute out of SRAM. Im pretty sure RP2040 copies out of QSPI and then executes in SRAM, but I'm not entirely sure what the downsides of this could be. I'm guessing there might be security implications?
jmole 2y ago
I don't think the Raspberry Pi foundation needs to focus on direct IGBT drive, and there are a lot more tasks in the world than driving BLDC motors. And yes, there are plenty of highly-specialized microcontrollers that serve a variety of industry niches quite well. But look at the competitors from ST in RP2354A price bracket of ~$1: RP2354A, $1 at whatever quantity: Dual 150 MHz CM33, 2MB flash, 520KB SRAM STM32F103, $0.99 at Qty 1K from LCSC: 72 MHz CM3, 128KB flash, 20KB SRAM. STM32L431, $0.98 at Qty 1K from LCSC: 80 MHz CM4, 256KB flash, 64KB SRAM. There are several ST clones from China that are offering a bit more SRAM, a bit higher clock speeds or slightly more flash, like 512KB, but nothing even comes close to the RP2350. PIO more than makes up for the lack of any digital-specific interface that you think you're missing, not to mention you have an entire extra core just sitting around that you could use to bit-bang whatever crazy interface you decide that you need. The main area where they are significantly lagging their price-matched competitors is the ADC, and analog in general. I suspect that they are prioritizing limited die area for compute over large analog blocks that are hard to characterize and design on whatever process Sony is giving them. And if you really need certain specific peripherals (and low-power doesn't matter to you) - capacitive/inductive sensing, DACs, etc., you're almost better off buying a low-spec ultra cheap MCU with the features you need, and then running it as a peripheral to the RP2350. I honestly don't think there's a better price/performance chip out there right now.