..which is a huge thing because AFAIK most Cortex-A SoCs on the market are full of undocumented peripherals. Cortex-Ms are usually sufficiently documented that you can bring them up from scratch. Once you want a MMU it's either "use our mainlined Linux drivers full of dark magic" (if you are very lucky - perfect if you want Linux, less so if you are developing your own OS), "use our Linux kernel full of binary blobs" (if you are less lucky) or, as a rule, "sign a NDA and don't even bother us if you aren't a billion-dollar corporation".
(Started it as a minor edit, then decided to elaborate so moved it to a new comment).
It is probably closest in spirit to a rp2350, which also famously has multiple powerful interesting i/o co-processors. rp2350 is 2+2 cpu+io-processor, baochip-1x is 1+4.
baochip's bao io (BIO) coprocessors use a very slim risc-v core (picorv), compared to a very small bespoke state machine for the rp2350. Baochip also has an exceedingly capable set of hardware security peripherals. And a full MMU, which definitionally does make it something more than an regular embedded chip!!
22nm doesn't sound like "much" I agree for a general purpose CPU. But rp2350 for example is 40nm. This is pretty ok for a embedded chip.
Depends on your definition of general-purpose. It is much closer to RP2350 than to a Ryzen.
Edit: except it has a MMU…
..which is a huge thing because AFAIK most Cortex-A SoCs on the market are full of undocumented peripherals. Cortex-Ms are usually sufficiently documented that you can bring them up from scratch. Once you want a MMU it's either "use our mainlined Linux drivers full of dark magic" (if you are very lucky - perfect if you want Linux, less so if you are developing your own OS), "use our Linux kernel full of binary blobs" (if you are less lucky) or, as a rule, "sign a NDA and don't even bother us if you aren't a billion-dollar corporation".
(Started it as a minor edit, then decided to elaborate so moved it to a new comment).
focus on Security over performance
It's not general purpose. The comparison section of the crowdsupply compares versus: https://www.crowdsupply.com/baochip/dabao#comparisons
It is probably closest in spirit to a rp2350, which also famously has multiple powerful interesting i/o co-processors. rp2350 is 2+2 cpu+io-processor, baochip-1x is 1+4.
baochip's bao io (BIO) coprocessors use a very slim risc-v core (picorv), compared to a very small bespoke state machine for the rp2350. Baochip also has an exceedingly capable set of hardware security peripherals. And a full MMU, which definitionally does make it something more than an regular embedded chip!!
22nm doesn't sound like "much" I agree for a general purpose CPU. But rp2350 for example is 40nm. This is pretty ok for a embedded chip.