Finally getting around to fully explore the RP2040 Pico board. It’s been in the cupboard for far too long. Chip is 133MHz (Overclockable to 400MHz) dual-core ARM Cortex M0+ with 30 GPIOs, 4 ADCs, 264KB SRAM and built-in USB 1.1 support. Earlier this week, they opened up the RP2040 chip to the general public for purchase for $1 for a one-off unit. I am sure the price will drop to $0.65 in bulk in a few months. This makes it the cheapest chip out there in its M0+ performance class (Let me know if you find cheaper ones than those with similar performance). Since it’s from the Raspberry Pi Foundation community support is here to stay for a long time. Considering these, I am inclined to put it into production designs once chip availability eases up, for non-connectivity-based projects.
There is a big problem though, it doesn’t have onboard flash memory to store your code in, so you would need to have an external flash memory (up to 16MB) always next to the chip. This will add to the cost. The board wouldn’t be that cheap anymore but still will be promising.
Let me know your thoughts on this.
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