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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Year 2021 in review – Top 10 posts and statistics [cnx-software.com]

The biggest story of 2021 has to be the worsening of semiconductors shortages with extremely long lead times [cnx-software.com], prices of some components going up multiple folds, constant complaints on Twitter about availability and prices. I think I even saw a website, hopefully misconfigured, showing an estimated availability of a specific STM32 MCU in 2037. This also gave rise to opportunities and board redesigns, with MotorComm Ethernet chips replacing some Realtek chips in SBCs such as NanoPi R2C [cnx-software.com] and Orange Pi R1S Plus LTS [cnx-software.com], and CH9102F showing up as a replacement for CP2104 [cnx-software.com] in some IoT boards.

We also got some interesting Arm processors, but sadly the high-expected Rockchip RK3588 [cnx-software.com] got delayed by another year, although it's getting really close with the first board expected in H1 2022. I promise! The company still introduced the RK3566 and RK3568 [cnx-software.com] quad-core Cortex-A55 processors with plenty of I/O for AIoT use cases. There was less to announce on Amlogic side with [the] S908X processor [cnx-software.com] still being very elusive (or has it been canceled?), but we still got news of [an] Amlogic A311D2 [cnx-software.com] octa-core Cortex-A73/A53processor be found next year in the upcoming Khadas VIM4 [cnx-software.com] single board computer. Allwinner hasn't released any really interesting [Arm] processors in the last couple of years, and 2021 was not different.

Instead, the most exciting announcement from Allwinner was their RISC-V processor namely [the] Allwinner D1 [cnx-software.com] and D1s/F133 [cnx-software.com], the first affordable RISC-V Linux processors found in boards such as Nezha [cnx-software.com] and Lichee RV [cnx-software.com]. In other RISC-V news [cnx-software.com], higher-end RISC-V cores were announced like the StarFive Dubhe [cnx-software.com] (Cortex-A75 like) and SiFive Performance P650 [cnx-software.com] (Cortex-A77 like) and should start to be found in new SoCs in 2022 or 2023. Espressif launched the ESP32-C3 WiFi & BLE SoC, announced the ESP32-H2 [cnx-software.com] with BLE 5.2, ZIgbee and Thread connectivity, and we got announcements for a wider variety of RISC-V microcontroller or processors for televisions [cnx-software.com], the automotive market [cnx-software.com], the Smart Home with more Bluetooth LE 5.3 [cnx-software.com] and Zigbee [cnx-software.com] MCU, as well as artificial intelligence [cnx-software.com], and more.

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