New ESP32-P4 - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: globoy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2024, 07:40:19 pm
content: This looks like it could be fun. Espressif is finally fielding a more general purpose micro. 2X 400 MHz RISC-V + 1X 40 MHz low-power RISC-V + decent on-board RAM and a bunch of peripherals. No on-board radios.https://www.espressif.com/en/news/ESP32-P4Not a lot of other detail or availability yet but I guess there are dev boards out there now or soon.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2024, 08:29:12 pm
content: I wonder if this device has better ADCs compared to the other ESP32s otherwise it is an utter fail to be a regular microcontroller.

author: floobydust
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2024, 11:09:49 pm
content: I could not find hardware data on the ESP32-P4, removed from their websitehttps://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/stable/esp32p4/hw-reference/index.htmlI think Espressif has gone stupid, they need to sack the marketing people choosing model numbers and names. What a mess.280 items in theProduct SelectorIC, SoC, Module, Dev Board - it's all a blur. Then try look for peripherals like ADC or CAN, the webpage seems to do nothing to help.Everything is an "ESP32", nothing for general purpose timers, major silicon errata over many revs ADC are pretty much useless even with calibration. I don't think they can actually do decent analog on the silicon.There is the Pico, Solo, WROOM, WROVER, MINI etc. and no idea what that means.Very hard to find/select a part.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2024, 11:14:02 pm
content: Quote from: floobydust on April 02, 2024, 11:09:49 pmThose are the modules.https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/v3.3/hw-reference/modules-and-boards.htmlhttps://www.espressif.com/en/products/modulesChoose your base IC -> Choose module if a module is needed.edit: interesting some parts of the ADC are shared with WIFI so that would explain the noise on those channels,https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/v4.4.1/esp32s2/api-reference/peripherals/adc.html

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2024, 11:33:22 pm
content: Let's wait for a datasheet.It looks more like what NXP calls a "crossover" MCU.Curious about price, power consumption and how much will be documented in terms of registers.

author: thm_w
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2024, 12:27:19 am
content: https://hackaday.com/2024/04/02/espressifs-esp32-p4-application-processor-details-begin-to-emerge/- 100MBPS ethernet, 2 USB2, I2C, SPI, I2S, I2C, I3C, 2-lane MIPI, SDMMC 3

author: woofy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2024, 08:22:11 am
content: Espressif first announced the P4 well over a year ago in January 23. Hopefully this time it's real and there will be dev kits soon.

author: hans
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 03, 2024, 08:50:04 am
content: No radio's? Hopefully we don't need ESP-IDF as well.It's quite a coincidence that they have announced this chip again on 1st of april. Makes you almost think it's an april fools joke as we're patiently waiting for this chip for over 15 months.

author: rwaters
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: June 09, 2024, 12:03:40 am
content: Yes, April Fools.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2024, 12:35:57 am
content: The chip was announed in Jan 2023 (18 months ago!) and still no trace of availability. It wasn't announced on an April 1st.It doesn't seem to be a joke:https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-p4https://riscv.org/news/2023/01/news-espressif-reveals-esp32-p4-a-high-performance-mcu-with-numerous-io-connectivity-and-security-features-espressif-systems/Still not even a datasheet available. Not sure what's up with that. I think that's the first time I've seen Espressif announce a new chip and be so late.And yes, it'll be obviously supported by ESP-IDF:https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-idf/en/latest/esp32p4/hw-reference/index.htmlNote that all links are dead for now. Was hoping to get documentation from that link - nope.I suppose that people will find a way to program it baremetal once it's actually out there. The reference manual should be enough for that. Hopefully. (This is also possibly on other ESP32 chips, apart from the radio module which is absolutely not documented, something that is common among vendors though.) Since this one doesn't have any radio, this would not be missing here.If someone has a contact at Espressif, I'm curious what is up with this chip.

author: ataradov
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 09, 2024, 12:58:59 am
content: Early announcement is likely for the AI stuff. Announcing AI does more to your stock price than actually releasing it.

author: woofy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 14, 2025, 03:16:42 pm
content: ESP32-P4 production parts should be available at the end of Q3 according to Espressif at Embedded World.I read Q4 for "End of Q3"

author: TAMHAN
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 19, 2025, 09:27:24 pm
content: Hello,one of their distributors already sells them, and also the C5. Small video on them here:Tam

author: peter-h
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 20, 2025, 04:16:18 pm
content: AIUI, the positives of ESP32 are- during covid, you could get them, so your company didn't go bust (a friend was in this situation and the ESP32 saved them)- they have integrated wifi and BT- their source code actually works (unlike the STM Cube stuff which needs many months of fixing)But there is the political risk, which is a bit like thishttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/opinions-on-st-32f407vgt6-versus-gigadevice-gd32f407vgt6/and actually very much like the above debate if you are looking for a general purpose chip.

author: anvoice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 08:09:31 am
content: Found a CYD (Cheap Yellow Display)module with P4on Aliexpress. Has anyone ordered one by chance? Seems like a nice alternative to the expensive and out-of-stock development boards.

author: woofy
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 09:58:32 am
content: AFAIK these boards are all using engineering samples and pre-production chips.I tried that once with the PIC16F877-ES.Never again.

author: tszaboo
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 02:12:25 pm
content: Quote from: TAMHAN on March 19, 2025, 09:27:24 pmYes there are engineering samples available.As I only consider them for hobby projects it's a bit pricey, so let's just wait for the cheap boards to arrive. It certainly more interesting than the new pi picos.

author: __george__
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 03:32:09 pm
content: Quote from: anvoice on March 22, 2025, 08:09:31 amI checked these as well, the price difference in comparison with the development board from the official store is not huge though (~10 usd).But the official development boards are for sure engineering samples, the question is, is the esp32-p4 chip itself considered in a production state or not? I don't see anything implying that it is not but I cannot even find the datasheet in the official website.

author: anvoice
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 07:37:24 pm
content: Quote from: __george__ on March 22, 2025, 03:32:09 pmI don't know about the CYD board. I found it for about $30 before tax, which is good considering the display is included, but I'm not sure how many IO pins it actually exposes. There are two 14 pin FPC connectors labelled "extended IO".The development boards on Aliexpress, except for the CYD, explicitly say engineering samples (some version 0.1, others 1.0).

author: bson
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: March 22, 2025, 09:07:22 pm
content: Is there actually any technical information on these yet? All I see is Product Packaging Information and a bunch of SDK stuff. What about a family guide with peripherals, core registers (like debug & trace etc), PINOUT, timing, etc etc. Stuff you actually need to put one on a board. Or are they supposed to only be used with those inane castellated-edge modules?

author: __george__
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: March 26, 2025, 11:29:58 pm
content: I just watched the Elektor webinar about the p4 and the guy from Espressif said that the p4 is expected to go into mass production in April-May. So I hope that by then they will provide all the technical information on the chips. Lets see.

author: __george__
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2025, 02:20:26 pm
content: Olimex now has an affordable ESP32-P4 boardhttps://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/ESP32-P4/ESP32-P4-DevKit/open-source-hardwareAnd also the ESP32-P4 nano from waveshare is also available in aliexpress with reasonable prices:https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008032416494.htmlThat being said I still cannot find any datasheet from the espressif website :/jlpcb has a Chinese version though, but the translation could be tough to understand:https://jlcpcb.com/partdetail/ESPRESSIF-ESP32P4NRW32/C22387510

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2025, 02:23:04 pm
content: Yes, dev boards are appearing but Espressif still haven't officially released the datasheet. Go figure. They have probably sent a confidential preliminary datasheet to some key partners.

author: Venturi962
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 11, 2025, 09:37:02 pm
content: The preliminary datasheet can be found with a Google Search.

author: yar
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: May 14, 2025, 11:21:21 pm
content: Indeed. The sheets have leaked enough that they can be found and are often included in the zip of samples associated with the products including them, like the CYD I bought for about $35. The makers exposed no useful I/O pins on the one I have, but Waveshare and others have boards with pins. They don't really target hardware devs with CYDs. That's part of the "C" in "CYD."I haven't yet seen a reference manual (the 2,000-page one, not the ~70-page one) for them yet. Doc has been trickling out and support is trickling into ESP-IDF and the Arduino layer for them. SiliconWizard is probably correct that if you're special enough to get chips, you're special enough to get docs, even if they're docs-in-progress.I agree the distance between announcement, the (weak) availability, and the actual volume shipments is weird. Espressif's press release department seems to be outrunning the engineering/manufacturing teams.It's entirely possible to write code on them now and much code from the web works on them with minimal tweaking. e.g. "Oh, no. psramInit() doesn't link." Well, it turns out that despite that appearing in lots of code, it doesn't actually seem to be apublished interfaceBoards with these parts can finally be found for non-scalper prices, but there's the strange state that all the parts are technically engineering samples, though they seem to be manufactured in at least moderate volume. There's also the understated "secret" that the engineering samples are all underclocked 10%, so each core is running at 360 MHz.Of note, they're using a step up from octal PSRAM. (Apparently, a DDR license is just out of the question there.) The doc waffles on what they're calling it, but at various times it's "xram" or"16-line psram"I get that this crowd is all about timing diagrams and register specs, but that's really not their bread and butter from what I can tell. They like to write the code that talks to the chips and provides anabstraction- for better and worse - in ESP-IDF for their developers. I know that's a turn-off to some here, but it works for them. They do the same thing with their little canned modules where the bus is inside the can and the board dev has to worry only about the timing between EN and RST and load factors on the I/O pins and ... not much else. Maybe that'll change with P4 since they can't say they're "protecting" anyone from the pain of developing around RF. I dunno. I'm waiting for the docs just like everyone else; I'm just watching them more closely than some here.Personally, I'm not yet sure who this product is for. Dual-400 is surely too power-hungry for the power market. It doesn't have radios for the radio market. (The boards integrate with their C6 WiFi 6 and C5 5 Mhz RF modules.) It's too slow to compete with dual-core RISC-V that left 400 MHz back in the K210 era world where multi-core parts like CV1800B, SG2002, and BL808 have been shipping for some time - and with actual, parallel DDRAM. Perhaps I'd have been more excited about this part years ago. We'll see how the market reacts.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 12:48:32 am
content: for all the people (rightfully) knocking XTensa ESP32 as poor general purpose microcontrollers...https://www.eevblog.com/forum/microcontrollers/suggestions-for-a-microcontroller-(general-purpose)/msg5850721/#msg5850721Quote from: brucehoult on March 17, 2025, 03:57:47 am

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 02:37:27 am
content: Quote from: Smokey on May 15, 2025, 12:48:32 amThe XTensa ISA is not so terrible in itself -- it's a fairly standard RISC. The most weird part is that the "full size" instructions are 24 bits not 32, which is a bit limiting. Not that it's easy to find productive uses for a full 32 bits and many successful RISC ISAs give away several of them: RISC-V uses 30 bits for the "32 bit" opcodes (75% of the opcode space is for the 16 bit opcodes), ARMv7 gives away 3 bits (87.5% of opcodes are for the 16 bit opcodes). Original Arm gives away 4 bits for conditional execution because other than the things that would be BNE/BLT/... in every ISA almost every instruction in most code has 4 bits saying "execute always". The explicit S (set condition codes) bit is almost a wasted bit too, as S=true is fine in almost all code (and the only option in 16 bit Thumb), but that's only the arithmetic instructions and load/sore instructions use that bit to specify ... load or store.The problem with XTensa is that it's poorly documented and supported for those who didn't pay millions for an IP license, there is little choice in compilers and other tools, and comparatively little software has been ported to it.But it seems to me that most of the criticism of "XTensa ESP32 as poor general purpose microcontrollers" is actually about the other IP in the chips e.g. ADC.If you want to see a REALLY NASTY instruction set, look at the one that is most probably in a lot of FTDI chips, but is exposed and documented in the VNC2 (Vinculum-II). You can get docs and tools here:https://ftdichip.com/firmware/vnc2-tools/I wrote quite a bit about it here …https://www.reddit.com/r/RISCV/comments/w5nduu/comment/ih9o9e2/… but the highlights include the only registers being program counter, stack pointer, and a status register.The assembly language uses what appear to be registers called %eax, %ebx, %ecx, %r0, %r1, %r2, %r3 but these turn out to be memory addresses 0, 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, and 24.I compiled the standard recursive fib() function for VNC2 and it generated (with optimisation on) 168 bytes of code for VNC2 vs 34 bytes for RISC-V, 30 bytes for ARMv7, and 68 bytes for ARMv8-A.

author: Smokey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 04:09:04 am
content: Quote from: brucehoult on May 15, 2025, 02:37:27 amya, this. for sure.The extension of the "never supposed to be released as a programmable general purpose microcontroller" is probably why the ADCs sucked so hard. It was probably intended as an embedded wifi/ble bridge module, which isn't an application that needs high precision ADCs.

author: brucehoult
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: May 15, 2025, 04:25:58 am
content: Another example of "not intended to be a general purpose microcontroller" is the new CH570D, which in most ways looks like a significant upgrade to the popular CH32V003 with 8x the RAM, 8x the flash, 2x the clock speed, USB, and 2.4 GHz data radio and all for the same $0.10 price in the 8 pin package ($0.20 for 20 pin).BUT, the 10 bit 8 channel ADC from the '003 is gone, with only a 4 bit ADC apparently designed just for decoding resistor ladder-encoded keypads. You also lose 3 GPIOs to two pins dedicated for a crystal and one for the antenna, which is a significant amount on the 8 pin package leaving only 3 GPIOs instead of 6.

author: __george__
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2025, 06:11:26 am
content: Finally the datasheet and the technical reference manual are now released in the official page:https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-p4They call them pre-release but still better to have something a bit more official there.

author: SiliconWizard
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: June 06, 2025, 08:29:16 pm
content: Dual-core (+ a low-power core), but only 360 MHz max. A bit on the low side.Now for the plus side: the TRM seems to be documenting all peripherals with their registers, so that you should be able to use it baremetal without using their SDK and without the need for reverse engineering, which seems to be a first for the ESP32 line, unless I missed something.