Totally agree. I hardly use any of the capabilities of current u-controllers. Seriously, 32-bits? And now quad cores? Edge devices don't need to be fast. I'd argue that 8-bit or 16-bit cores are capable enough. And then a couple of megahertz of clock speed is quite sufficient.
As the clock speed is increased, power consumption goes up. I'd rather see a 16-bit 100 Mhz core loaded with IO, ADCs, DACs, I2C, SPI and serial ports. That's all.
Personally, I've mostly gone to the Espressif side. Yea, they still have problems. Mostly I don't like how the ADC works: it's not very linear. The IO seems to be solid.
PI, I believe caters to the maker crowd and is trying to keep the Chinese knock offs out. Again, the hardware is quite capable already so they could focus more on making the hardware reliable and lower the power requirements. No need for more cores.
I had some problems with Espressif's devices and RF noise, but that's a "me" problem.
The place I'm with now is updating a device, and we're sticking with the same 8-bit core with a 12-bit ADC. It just has more memory so we can put newer output protocols on the device. There's literally no need for anything faster.
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