Raspberry Pi Pico 2 lands with (drum roll) RISC-V cores It's exciting news for RISC-V fans: Raspberry Pi is adding support for the open ISA with the launch of the Pico 2 and the company's new RP2350 microcontroller. Pi Pico 2 The Pi Pico 2 that arrived at a seaside Vulture outpost today – click to enlarge The Pico 2 board retails for $5 and, according to the Pi team, retains …
I built myself a digital graphic equaliser with optical I/O using a STM32H7 device. Luckily I didn't hit any issues with that, or rather the issues I did hit were solved by reading the docs more carefully and a bit of experimentation. I guess production engineering for a proper product would be a whole different ballgame.
520k immediately reminded my of my first* computer, a venerable Atari 520ST (which I know didn't actually have 520k of memory, I guess they just thought it sounded better than 512)
I wonder how the two would compare in capability - the ST obviously being a much more complete general purpose computer, but... 150mhz is a *lot* faster, and we're not having to load everything off 3.5" floppy disks.
* Technically I used a Vic20 before hand but it was my dads, and the obligatory BBC-B at school, but the Atari was actually mine.
This is one bizarrely peculiar weird design, an intriguing microcontroller potluck gathering to be sure, a chip with four cores dished into it, but you can only use two of them at a time. Two of the cores have an FPU, a DSP, an MPU, and support TrustZone security and secure boot, the other 2 cores are just for integers but can access all chip resources without any security at all (AFAICS they don't go through the MPU, much like Alibaba's "open sesame" C910 vector units). Odd design.
True enough though that when folks bitbang themselves an HDMI signal out of one of the two M0+ in the RP Pico 1 (the original), they could have done that same thing with an RV32I instead. Still, a strange and puzzling design to me.
One SKU - lots of potential uses. If one of the use cases makes it big they can easily spin up a custom version.
Interesting because well -established micro controllers are insanely specifically designed with a million variations with every combinations of features so you can save 0.1c by choosing the part with exactly the bits you want.
I wonder if the rate of innovation in new toys means that this is the new normal - more general u-controllers for a few c more but with quicker development
It would have been desirable to have all four cores running at the same time. It could be a limitation of bus interfacing or multiplexing?
But allowing ARM+ARM / RISC-V+RISC-V / ARM+RISC-V is much better than it being ARM or RISC-V only as others which offer the choice seem to be.
Could adding RISC-V have been inspired by a desire to hit those selling chips with ARM and RISC-V cores? They seem set on world domination, have appeared ruthless when it comes to hitting, undermining, undercutting their competition.
It would be regrettable if RISC-V wasn't intended as a first class citizen on the chip but every RISC-V addition is a welcome addition. If it furthers RISC-V interest that can only be welcomed..
Possibly because as it's a microcontroller not a full computer and the USB is for programming, power, and a bit of serial work but not everything that USB-C can do, then there's no great benefit to swapping?
And use it as direct swap for existing equipment that uses the Pico 'as is'?
Well, on the RPi 4 and 5 there is no pin swapping going on either. Its USB-C is nothing more than a power connector, and doesn't support more than 5V. But having USB-C is still useful, because it's that much more mechanically robust, and reversible.
Most microcontroller boards e.g. esp32 have moved to USB-C for that reason. Some have PD support and include a buck converter for fast battery charging or >5V power output for whatever electronics project you are making
The pico2 seems to use the same surface-mount micro-USB that always falls off the board, or the data pins detach at the back first. There also appears to be plenty of space on the board to add (optional?) PD components for those who want >5V in their projects
Well, on the RPi 4 and 5 there is no pin swapping going on either. Its USB-C is nothing more than a power connector, and doesn't support more than 5V. But having USB-C is still useful, because it's that much more mechanically robust, and reversible.
That is incorrect, the USB-C port is a fully functioning USB OTG port. With Raspberry Pi OS, it is normally only used for power.
The USB-C port is a fully functioning USB OTG port but many USB A to C patch leads only have the 5V and GND connections wired in. If you just pick a lead out of your cables box you may well end up with a 5V and GND only lead. All those leads I thought were faulty and put to one side are now clearly labelled 5V ONLY.
On the Oico they have 4x through-hole soldered lugs to keep them in place. Should be pretty strong, shouldn't it? The (clone)Arduino Pro Micro's have a micro-USB without through-hole lugs and those indeed were a nightmare. Very easy to rip the port off the pads.
I do agree it's time for USB-C on them though and I will stick to decent clones, or maybe wait for something with that -B chip from someone like WeAct Studio hopefully.
If all 4 cores could run at once and all shard the exact same memory, I wonder what fun could be had learning RISC-V+ARM "multi-architecture executable code" or "Fat binary" or "multiarchitecture binary". Basically each program has a tiny machine code stub in front that on one architecture is harmless junk instructions followed by a jump to native binary code, and on another architecture is harmless junk instructions followed by a different jump to native binary code. Basically you need to understand the machine code of both architectures at a binary level to create that tiny "stub" once and then reuse it. Was popular with "Multi-architecture shellcode - shellcode targeting multiple platforms"* , but with the dominance of x86/x64 has mostly vanished. It still exists, but is obscure knowledge.
* (ref: phrack.org issues 57)
I have a feeling since these are first batch at launch they're waiting to see if any hardware bugs crop up before committing to large quantity in manufacturing for the masses. It's one of the reasons why I didn't order the RaspberryPi 5 at launch. I just placed a new order for the Pi 5 8 gig along with five Pico 2s to try out. A side note I did pre-ordered the Pi 4 at launch and a few months later they did a revision for a faster clocked CPU as they tweaked the power supply design. I was a bit miffed at that because how expensive these Pi's are these days.
Considering how cheap these Picos are if bugs do creep up it's not too big of a deal to buy the updated ones if I need to.
RISC-V will eventually dominate (unless the U.S. government takes steps to reign it in) so it's a good thing Raspberry Pi Foundation added a few cores for tinkerers to play with. They're sufficient for most simple control applications, but lack things like floating point math to be used as signal processors.
I'm pretty sure it will still use ARM, since there's a incestuous relationship between Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Eben Upton, the founder of RP used to work at Broadcom.
I do believe RISC-V is the future and that it will see greater and greater usage everywhere. Many Chinese microcontroller manufacturers produce RISC-V-based products.
I want to make a device that can recognize the melody of a song. I have no idea at all. This problem is probably related to AI and it is quite difficult for a beginner like me. I just want to recognize Taylor Swift's new song. https://myinstants39.com/soundboard/i-can-do-it-with-a-broken-heart/
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