Here is why they matter
- Cost < $50
- Energy consumption < 1 watt
- Coding resources
Problems at the moment is scarcity. You can not obtain them. I happen to have about 20 of these laying around because I hoarded them before the plandemic, but I can't get my hands on a Pi 4. I use these devices a lot. And now I've started using the Espressif ESP32. This device seems to still be available.
The ESP32 (works using the Arduino infrastructure) is even cheaper than the Pi ($4), less power hungry than the Pi Zero, has no operating system and more IO. But the ESP32 can't be used as a desktop PC in any manner.
>I appreciate your response and input. I did pick up a PI 4 and they are readily available. Please check out the links under further information. I do believe canakit is the site. I still like PI.
Last time I looked, the ESP32 family uses a couple different cores... neither of which are ARM Cortex or x86/x64... there's RISC-V and Xtensa LX6 and now LX7 as far as I know.
RISC-V is relatively new, instruction set is only about 11-12 years old now. Needs more time to mature.
I haven't even heard of Xtensa until recently.
It looks like both have a Linux kernel floating around out there, but I don't know if (doubt) they've reached a workable level of maturity yet. Haven't tried one out yet, but I have certainly been looking into ESP32's a lot more due to their cost and the fact that THEY'RE IN STOCK! Trouble is, everyone else has noticed that fact too... I guess that means we might see an explosion of new developments in ESP32 land.
Yea, I confess, I just ordered about a dozen of them myself. I never know.
I'm just reading into this a little more this morning...
From the ESP32 technical reference manual:
1.3.3 External Memory The ESP32 can access external SPI flash and SPI SRAM as external memory. Table 4 provides a list of external memories that can be accessed by either CPU at a range of addresses on the data and instruction buses. When a CPU accesses external memory through the Cache and MMU, the cache will map the CPU’s address to an external physical memory address (in the external memory’s address space), according to the MMU settings. Due to this address mapping, the ESP32 can address up to 16 MB External Flash and 8 MB External SRAM.
That looks to be a severe constraint if one is looking to use an ESP32 as a modern desktop PC. The MMU doesn't have paging capability of the external memory. On top of that, code can't be executed from external memory... so whatever you want to run has to fit inside the ESP32's IRAM. Unless you get an ESP32 such as the ESP32-S2FH2 with 2mb flash on die, and I think there's one with 4mb flash, but that's still not very much to work with.
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