Comment by random3
3 hours ago
Can you list the actual chips you’re referring to and additional sources to follow? I’ve finally started playing with ESP32 and recently getting curious about the smallest possible things out there. Also
3 hours ago
Can you list the actual chips you’re referring to and additional sources to follow? I’ve finally started playing with ESP32 and recently getting curious about the smallest possible things out there. Also
Here's the CH32v003, https://github.com/openwch/ch32v003 These are pretty low end and are fairly available at low cost. Here's a youtube of someone talking through some of the the CH32 boards, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kss6WQvJbRs
He talks about them being the "10c/chip" chip.
Then, there is the CH32v303 https://www.wch-ic.com/products/CH32V303.html, which is the lower end of the chips that support minimal floating point and USB host/client. These ones are a bit more pricey, https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/C5456849.html at $US1.72 each. The extra price is QFP64 (64 pins, quad flat pack) and more features on the chip, USB, CAN, V4F extension giving one instruction multiply and some floating point operations.
Note that the fact that this chip uses an extension, V4F, for floating point (I think?) is part of the argument of Dmitry's piece on the RISC-V. The chip is pretty low price for a fair bit of power.
CH32v303 costs more than much more capable ARM based RP2354A
And on the RP2354 you can swap one or both ARM cores for RISC-V cores at boot.
I think the CH32v303's single V4F core might be slightly more capable than the Hazard 3 cores RISC-V cores (as it has a hardware FPU), but for everything else the RP2354 is probably better (and the ARM cores do have hardware FPUs)