Raspberry Pi Pico 2: a RISC-V bet!

A few clarifications / updates: You can actually use Arm + RISC-V—just, one of each core for a frankenmonster microcontroller. Can't use all four at the same time. MicroPython has released two preview UF2s, one for the Arm cores, and one for the RISC-V cores. As many have pointed out (thanks!) RP2040 was QFN-56, RP2350A QFN-60, so the pinout is slightly different (so not an exact drop-in replacement). I don't know about ADC quality improvements or some of the other details many have asked about, so please check in on the Pi forums and in other reviews for more data—this video is meant to be a quick overview to introduce the things that mattered to me in my beginner-level use of microcontrollers :)

I want to point out that that Lego brick does actually contain an RP2040 and an OLED display. The cable coming out of the back is just the USB tether to supply power. It's an incredibly impressive project.

A Pi Pico 2 was unexpected, but it's interesting that they're using RISC-V.

I do think it's important to mention that the Hazard3 RISC-V cores in this thing are actually designed by Luke Wren, to quote Raspberry Pi "currently a Principal Engineer in the Raspberry Pi chip team". They didn't just grab some open-source RISC-V CPU; arguably, they did the opposite.

I'm the dev of LogicAnalyzer, and already have ordered three Pico 2 to upgrade the project among other things :D

ngl the Picoboy you mentioned in the video looks pretty sick! It's a really good price for a DIY console, especially with the discount code you provided in the description! 100% getting one! Thanks Jeff!!!

7:50 unexpected jeff beatboxing is always a +1 from me

Dang, I wish they'd put usb c on them. Still looks cool though! Excited about RISC-V

"Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling" Who are you going to be next time? The suspense is killing me.

Great video Jeff, and thanks for the shout out! It's really amazing what these little micro controllers can do.👍

Still no usb C

The M33 includes an FPU and basic support for double precision. This is a huge improvement.

The EU must be really angry that they still didn't switch to USB-C 😂

I should buy one and add it to my project pile that never gets smaller for some reason

i love this! ive always wanted to tip my toes into risc v programming and the barrier to entry has never been lower!

"There's no way to disable the speaker..." Red Shirt Jeff begs to differ.

I think it is also exciting that the new ARM cores come with a FPU, so any signal processing heavy applications will benefit greatly from that!

A great take on possible transition between ISAs. Great job RPi.

RPI website claims hardware divide, single precision floating point hardware, and DSP acceleration are implemented as part of the ARM M33 core. For some apps (such as FFTs) that I commonly use, those features mean more than the small clock frequency bump. Also, one more ADC channel. Will be interested in how those pan out in real world tests.

Now THIS is interesting. Guess I'll be buying a few to put away for future projects. After your interview, I did get the impression they were considering RISC-V, but I didn't expect it until at least this time next year, so this is quite an interesting surprise. It's not an SBC though, so it's not quite as interesting there. Being a drop-in replacement (assuming it is always that simple) is really exciting though. I'm loving all the RP2040 projects lately, especially in modding game consoles (I just installed one in my Switch last week, in fact), so hopefully this opens up a few more options for those.