The Raspberry Pi Foundation's first microcontroller, the Raspberry Pi Pico is now on sale at $4. Raspberry Pi is normally associated with single board microcomputers. This microcontroller uses the RP2040 dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ chip. The board has support for C, C++, and microPython.
We had three principal design goals for RP2040: high performance, particularly for integer workloads; flexible I/O, to allow us to talk to almost any external device; and of course, low cost, to eliminate barriers to entry. We ended up with an incredibly powerful little chip, cramming all this into a 7 × 7 mm QFN-56 package containing just two square millimetres of 40 nm silicon. RP2040 has:
- Dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ @ 133MHz
- 264KB (remember kilobytes?[*]) of on-chip RAM
- Support for up to 16MB of off-chip Flash memory via dedicated QSPI bus
- DMA controller
- Interpolator and integer divider peripherals
- 30 GPIO pins, 4 of which can be used as analogue inputs
- 2 × UARTs, 2 × SPI controllers, and 2 × I2C controllers
- 16 × PWM channels
- 1 × USB 1.1 controller and PHY, with host and device support
- 8 × Raspberry Pi Programmable I/O (PIO) state machines
- USB mass-storage boot mode with UF2 support, for drag-and-drop programming
And this isn't just a powerful chip: it's designed to help you bring every last drop of that power to bear. With six independent banks of RAM, and a fully connected switch at the heart of its bus fabric, you can easily arrange for the cores and DMA engines to run in parallel without contention.
[*] By comparison, the Apple II computer (introduced in June 1977) had: 4-48 KiB of RAM, a 6502 processor (running at 1 MHz), and an Introductory price of US$1,298 (equivalent to $5,476 in 2019).
Additional coverage:
- Raspberry Pi Enters Microcontroller Game With $4 Pico
- Raspberry Pi Pico, RP2040 and Adafruit family of boards
- The Raspberry Pi Pico is a new $4 microcontroller
- Raspberry Pi Pico, the first microcontroller released by Raspberry Pi Foundation, based on the new RP2040 MCU.
- Raspberry Pi Pico microcontroller: specifications, features and RP2040
- Programming Raspberry Pi Pico with Python and MicroPython
- How to solder GPIO pin headers to Raspberry Pi Pico
- Raspberry Pi Pico FAQ
- Welcome Raspberry Pi to the world of microcontrollers
- Hello Raspberry Pi Pico and RP2040!
- Happy Pico/RP2040 Day!
Related Stories
Raspberry Pi Announces RP2040 Chips For $1
Earlier this year the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico with RP2040 microcontroller for doing embedded development. Now that RP2040 chip is being sold for just $1 USD via their resellers for those wanting to build their own electronics with this Raspberry Pi silicon.
[...] The Raspberry Pi Foundation announced they have shipped over 600k Raspberry Pi Pico boards this year and orders for another 700k. More creators and other businesses meanwhile have been seeking to build out their own wares using the RP2040 chip, which has now led the group to offering the chip for $1 USD in single-unit sales. By this autumn they expect "serious volume" of the RP2040 chips for those looking to build out their own wares with this tasty silicon.
Raspberry Silicon update: RP2040 on sale now at $1
Also at CNX Software. Alasdair Allan says:
Today's announcement is for single unit quantity only. We're still figuring out what reel-scale pricing will look like in the autumn, but we expect it to be significantly lower than that.
Previously: Raspberry Pi Releases "Pico" Microcontroller at $4 Per Unit
Raspberry Pi Users Mortified as Microsoft Repository that Phones Home is Added to Pi OS
Raspberry Pi Pico W Launches For $6
The Raspberry Pi Pico W is an update to last year's Raspberry Pi Pico using their in-house RP2040 silicon. The Pico W is a small update to this IoT platform that has already sold more than two million boards.
With the Raspberry Pi Pico W, there is now 802.11n wireless networking added to the Pico platform to make it more attractive for IoT use-cases. The Pico W retains pin compatibility with the original Pico. The Pico W makes use of an Infineon CYW43439 wireless chip.
Aside from the addition of 802.11n wireless networking, the Pico W is the same platform as the Pico. Rather than $4, this 802.11n WiFi variant will sell for $6 USD.
Also launching are two versions with pre-soldered headers:
Pico H ($5) and Pico WH ($7) add pre-populated headers, and our new 3-pin debug connector, to Pico and Pico W respectively. Pico H and Pico W are available today; Pico WH will follow in August.
[...] Eagle-eyed readers of datasheets will notice that CYW43439 supports both Bluetooth Classic and Bluetooth Low-Energy: we have not enabled Bluetooth on Pico W at launch, but may do so in the future.
Previously: Raspberry Pi Releases "Pico" Microcontroller at $4 Per Unit
Raspberry Pi Begins Selling its RP2040 Microcontroller for $1
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:37AM
we did it!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Rich on Friday January 22 2021, @01:17AM (10 children)
Already saw the news on a German forum and had a look at it. Here's the rundown:
I think it aims straight at the STM32 blue pill and ESP32 market. Pricewise it's just below "western" "pills", or even the STM32F103C8T6 chip itself, it can't compete with the Chinese offers on the 'bay, but these might well have the occasional re-labeled GD32F103C8T6 (not that the Gigadevices chip is something bad). The Pico packs a bit more oomph. The ESP32 offerings are even more performant, but with them it's a bit so-so with the Tensilica core, slightly wonky libraries and being not really mass-IO oriented. You'll still go with the STM32 when it comes down to low power stuff with a quartz clock, or the ESP32 when radio is needed.
I/O wise, the RP2040 is a bit meager, but it does have about double of each of the classic ATmega328 blocks. "Timers" are rather dumb, fixed to 1 MHz clock, but they're intended for software use only, and that looks acceptable with overall IRQ latency anyway. What's called "timer" elsewhere is in the PWM, of which there are 8 channels. Good for microstepping 4 motors - what's not to like. I don't really like how the RP2040 keeps wall time.
While the fixed IO looks rather sorry compared to the feature sets of today's competing microcontrollers, the RP2040 brings "PIO", programmable IO, which are little state machines that can run little (shall we say "pico"?) programs that are geared to enable the weirdest ways of precise bit-banging. They have examples for a triggered logic analyzer (to DMA), or VGA output. Looks very interesting, I look forward to what nifty things people come up with.
The PIO certainly bundle a lot of possibilities that's hardcoded with the competition and therefore all the complexity for the IO groups goes away, both in form of 1000-page manuals, and support library. The C one looks clean, lean and it builds with CMake (rather than forcing some Eclipse monstrosity on the developer). Good thing. Also, there is just ONE chip, compared to hundreds that come from ST. I'd assume that makes obsolescence much less of an issue. It's some QFN56 plus center ground pad, but if you want to solder, you can solder-in the whole Pico, which seems to be flat on the bottom with appropriate contacts.
Broadcom can be asshats at times, but if one can get along without them, I think the whole package is a good deal, especially if you plan to do fast but weird digital IO.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday January 22 2021, @01:53AM (2 children)
I started dipping my (very busy) toes into microcontrollers last year with the Arduino. How does attaching an accelerometer to a pico compare to doing the same thing with the Arduino? Easier, harder, about the same?
(Score: 2) by KilroySmith on Friday January 22 2021, @04:05AM (1 child)
This is brand-new, so hooking up an accelerometer will be more difficult. For the Arduino, it's as simple as ordering an Arduino-compatible accelerometer off Amazon, then using the provided libraries to read it. For the Pico, you'll have to figure out which pins to connect to the accelerometer, then you may need to write your own code to read the accelerometer. In a year or so, I'd expect the answer to change, and the two to be more-or-less equivalent.
(Score: 2) by stormreaver on Friday January 22 2021, @04:02PM
Thanks for the answer. I suspected that would be the case. It sounds like a whole ton of fun, if only I had the time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 22 2021, @02:32AM
I saw this described as custom silicon designed by the Raspberry Pi team. Does Big Bad Broadcom even apply here?
Dual-core is not immediately useful but could become so.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 22 2021, @02:02PM (5 children)
Or at least Star Raiders?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rich on Friday January 22 2021, @09:21PM (4 children)
The Youtube algorithm just suggested a video "BBC Micro emulation on a $4 Raspberry Pi Pico" to me. Looks faithful. They show "Elite". Does that count in place of "Star Raiders" for now? I would bet that an Atari 8-bit emulation already is in the works somewhere, so Star Raiders might not be that far away.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 22 2021, @09:40PM (3 children)
The trick in Atari 8 bit emulation is the GTIA and sound chips - not that they're hard to emulate, just that they are rather specialized. In GTIA there's also the question: do you emulate the bugs that were in the majority of GTIA chips shipped, or do you emulate the design and later bug-fixed chips that shipped toward the end of the product run? I don't think there were many instances of the GTIA bugs being used to do intentional things. I know I designed a program to the documentation and it had a flicker-bug on the 800s & 400s that I couldn't explain (or fix) until the next gen 1200 computers came out with a fixed GTIA that my program worked perfectly on.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday January 22 2021, @10:54PM (2 children)
Without looking, I would assume that MESS has all that figured out and in code comments. The interesting "new" task would be to get the Pico's PIO to precisely output the original video signal. Or, for Apple II or Mac emulation emulate the Wozmachine, so you can directly hook up the floppy mechanisms. Or, because these cause hassle, have another pico that emulates the floppy mechanism, too, with fast SD card backend storage on the quad SPI. Or, for the C64 do the SID with an external analog filter. If you bring enough time, the nerd fun can be endless. :)
(Score: 2) by Rich on Friday January 22 2021, @11:08PM
Replying to myself here, because I just thought of one more useful retro project (as useful as retro stuff is, anyway): Have an interface that picks up all sort of vintage video signals from original devices and translates it to "modern" digital video, or at least VGA, because this is what many monitors still understand. Chances are that the original monitor just crapped out when you want to try that original (or originally emulated) vintage gear. Bonus points for a knob that dials in vintage TV artifacts. (But spare us the 50 Hz flicker of PAL!)
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:20AM
But who has an analog television to use as a monitor anymore?
I know the rubber belts in all my floppy drives disintegrated 10+ years ago.
Much better to emulate to an HDMI out and SD storage.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @02:15AM (9 children)
This seems a little imbalanced. 133Mhz, is 486DX4 territory, which you could do quite a lot with. But if I remember right, back in those days 4 - 16MB of RAM was a typical install. With a 4 to 1 disk cache, your still looking at just over a meg including user space applications. Even for a simple router (without firewall) that isn't much RAM. You couldn't even load a 360K FDD completely into memory.
Incidentally I had an apple II+ with 48k, and a commodore 128. But those were tiny, tiny kernels.
What could you actually use one of these for?
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Friday January 22 2021, @02:38AM (4 children)
It's a microcontroller. You want to step up to the Raspberry Pi Zero if you want an operating system.
Incidentally, this launch seems like good evidence that a revamp of Raspberry Pi Zero is coming at some point. They should switch to USB Type-C, DisplayPort over Type-C, 4 cores of some kind, wireless by default, and ditch the $5 price point.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @07:55AM (3 children)
Why? You have your RP 4 for 4 cores. Wireless is not by default because you don't need it for many workloads. I don't understand your comment at all.
The $5 price point is for non-networked zero.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 22 2021, @08:14AM (2 children)
http://linuxgizmos.com/rpi-zero-w-clone-offers-quad-core-power-for-15/ [linuxgizmos.com]
https://www.notebookcheck.net/Orange-Pi-Zero2-The-Raspberry-Pi-Zero-alternative-is-finally-orderable.501626.0.html [notebookcheck.net]
Why not? People run it as a desktop, media player, etc. Alternatives are going to quad-core (not the big cores of Pi4, obviously) at around $15.
I didn't specify a time frame for doing it. Raspberry Pi Zero will remain in production until at least January 2026. They could launch a new version in 2025.
Pico can take on SOME of the duties that Zero was used for. They can drop the non-wireless option and $5 price point for a Zero2.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @10:19AM (1 child)
RPi will always use HDMI as long as HDMI is the standard on TVs. It's important to them that a dedicated monitor is not required.
USB-C sure, it's a better physical connector than other USB ports and can supply more power, but DisplayPort over USB-C is kind of a loopy idea to begin with and only found on high end hardware. And DisplayPort just isn't required.
What this does is bring Raspberry Pi branding to a more powerful microcontroller than Arduino. The RPi has iffy GPIO and lots of CPU power, Arduino has good I/O but so little computation power that you can barely connect to networks with it. This will split the difference nicely.
And it opens up the possibility of a RPi with both on board, a real RPi system with a microcontroller on the side for realtime I/O. The Beaglebone can do this but it's expensive and outdated. That would be pretty darn handy.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday January 22 2021, @01:22PM
Fine, HDMI Alt Mode [hdmi.org] over USB Type-C.
RPi Zero has a mini-HDMI port. If they change it, it would be to micro-HDMI or USB Type-C. Choosing USB allows the port to be multi-use, choosing micro-HDMI allows reuse of cables that people bought for RPi 4B/5/???.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by KilroySmith on Friday January 22 2021, @04:09AM
FreeRTOS would be an appropriate kernel for this type of device, with a footprint starting around 10KB depending on the services that you include. That won't include the kind of capabilities that you'd get in a Linux kernel, but if you need those kinds of capabilities I've heard that the Raspberry Pi organization might have a more appropriate board...
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 22 2021, @02:04PM (2 children)
I have always been underwhelmed with onboard RAM provisions in microcontrollers. I took those theory classes where they taught the "Harvard Architecture" maxims of ROM to RAM ratios, but somehow my applications never fit within those norms and we almost always ended up installing a 32Kx8 RAM on our 8 bit micros.
These days, the question is: what libraries are you wanting to install? Is 264K enough to run lib-gcrypt?
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:55PM (1 child)
Not disagreeing with anything, but single threaded apps have it easy, the real killer is when you got multiple thread RTOS and each thread gets spawned off with a dedicated statically defined stack.
So on a single thread app with one big shared stack things can get kinda sloshy and its OK if you can't do TCPIP stuff AND framebuffer graphics AND processing because being single threaded you can't do them all at the same time anyway... Multithreaded HURTS without enough memory.
My favorite thing is how some RTOS like ARM Mbed OS just go insane if you overflow the stack. Hilarious! Or sometimes they crash. It can be a mess.
I like using multithreaded RTOS to do stuff like decouple the scheduling of my IO, GUI, and processing, compared to doing in arduino-style in one big loop, but there is a memory cost...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Saturday January 23 2021, @05:04PM
I have found that multithreaded RTOS work pretty well, as long as you are seriously underutilizing the capacity of the system, like 50% or less. When things get tight, prioritized interrupts and all the rest frequently throw hard to debug unpredictable behaviors into the mix and people really have a hard time setting them right.
When possible and it's not always possible with things like TCPIP and framebuffer and others happening simultaneously, but when possible I like to define a single monotonic timed interrupt for the system, like once per 500uS or whatever, and then run a deterministic choreographed script of what happens on each phase of that interrupt, so maybe do 40 cycles with 20 of them servicing things that need to happen every 1mS, 10 more things that need to happen every 2mS, then the remaining 10 can service things that need to happen within 20ms... put an "in interrupt service" signal on a GPIO line and watch it on a scope, or if you can dump the assembly and ensure that your code WILL finish within the allotted 500uS. Now, anything else that needs doing but isn't time critical can get serviced in the "main loop" that runs whenever the time critical stuff isn't happening. I've made several systems that way and they never had the "jeez, it only happens once every 6 weeks or so, but it's really weird I can't explain it" bugs.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Touché) by JeffPaetkau on Friday January 22 2021, @02:19AM (2 children)
“It seems like every fruit company is making its own silicon these days, and we’re no exception. “
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @03:27AM
Waiting on the cherimoya pi, I bet they'll run things smoothly.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Friday January 22 2021, @02:09PM
I wondered when the "pace of innovation" would become irrelevant to the consumer and "outdated" fab facilities would plummet in value such that they became relevant to the broad tier one market. Seems like that day is here now.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @08:09AM
As a fan of Microchip PICs in the past, I think the specs have me converted. For hobby use, I think I would choose this instead now. Definitely better specs than anything Arduino.
My Pico is on the way!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @12:50PM (4 children)
ESP32 costs the same and has tons more functionality. This thing's a dud.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @03:06PM
It can't even pull its weight against the no-radio STM32 offerings.
But don't worry, the Maker™ Marketing Cartel will ensure that Clickaday, Arsetechica, et.al. will promote it at every opportunity ...at the cost of other Educational projects like micro:bit. Nice one, RPF.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @06:06PM (1 child)
FYI: Looks like the ESP32 costs at least twice this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 22 2021, @10:21PM
Only if you're an idiot who doesn't know how to shop.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday January 23 2021, @04:59PM
I'd like to compare the dev environments.
ESP32 has interpreters like micropython and ulisp and that BASIC language environment, or great support for freertos and stuff like that.
In theory the Pi Pico could have similar stuff maybe in theory better stuff, but whats it got now?
For a couple bucks more I could get a zero with an excellent linux development environment and more IO.