History Repeating
...AND THEN THERE WERE TWO
RP2040 AND ESP32 RISE ABOVE THE SHORTAGES
That the last few years have been difficult for
the electronics industry is no secret. Shortages
in a range of components, from processors
to simple power-management ICs, have
necessitated some rapid rethinking when it
comes to designing development boards.
Last year we celebrated the launch of Raspberry
Pi’s RP2040, the company’s first in-house silicon and
first microcontroller. Little did we know how popular
it would become: With Raspberry Pi working hard
to ensure a steady supply in both reel and single-
chip quantities and offering aggressive pricing, the
RP2040 has become the go-to chip for those who’ve
found stock of their usual microcontrollers wanting.
“We’d expected to pick up RP2040 customers in
2022, but that they’d still be at the prototyping and
early production stage,” Raspberry Pi CEO Eben
Upton tells us. “There’s certainly a lot of this going
on — JLCPCB report that they’ve seen over 1,100
distinct RP2040-based designs in their first year
of availability — but we’re also seeing full-scale
OEM orders, probably driven by people rapidly
substituting RP2040 into existing designs where the
incumbent microcontroller is unavailable. We’ve
shipped about five million units so far, and are
shipping about 500,000 units a month at present.”
Raspberry Pi isn’t the only company riding the
supply chain storm: Espressif Systems, long a staple
of the maker market with its low-cost, radio-equipped
ESP8266 and ESP32 families of systems-on-chips,
has worked effectively to keep its parts in stock too —
even launching variants specifically designed to boost
yields and reduce per-chip costs, while simultaneously
making the move to a whole new architecture (see
“A RISC-V Revolution” on
page 42 of the magazine).
We’re not at the point of a
Raspberry Pi–Espressif duopoly,
but the shift in focus for many
has been sudden and swift — and
for those who’ve lost customers as
a result of shortages, winning them
back could prove a challenge.
—Gareth Halfacree
3makezine.com/boards
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1MB flash,
256kB RAM,
2MB QSPI Flash
1MB flash,
256kB RAM,
2MB QSPI flash
264kB SRAM,
8MB SPI flash
32kB flash,
2.5kB SRAM
4MB flash,
2MB PSRAM
264kB RAM,
8MB SPI flash
2kB RAM,
32kB flash
3.3V
3.3V
3.3V
3.3V
3.3V
3.3V
5V
—
1.3
"
240×240
color IPS TFT
LCD display
—
—
1.54
"
240×240
color TFT
display
—
—
P
P
P
P
—
—
Memory
Digital Pins
Analog
Pins
Radio Video
Input
Voltage
Operating
Voltage
Battery
Connection
—
8
18
21
8
5
20
20
Bluetooth
Low Energy
Bluetooth
Low Energy
—
—
Wi-Fi
—
—
8 PWM,
6 ADC
18 PWM,
8 ADC
16 PWM,
4 ADC
4 PWM,
4 ADC
5 PWM,
3 ADC
16 PWM,
4 ADC
6 PWM,
6 ADC
3.7V–5V
3V–6V
3.3V–5V
3.5V–16V
5V
3.3V–5V
5V–16V
M83_Outsert01-12_BGuide2022_F1.indd 3M83_Outsert01-12_BGuide2022_F1.indd 3 10/10/22 1:05 PM10/10/22 1:05 PM
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