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ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

espressif.com

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Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#31

Post by Rochus »

volemo wrote: post #25
Rochus wrote: post #15

They claim that the chip has an "MMU". But unfortunately this doesn't seem to be a true RISC-V MMU (according to the Sv32 specification) integrated into the CPU core itself, but just a peripheral designed for memory mapped SPI flash and PSRAM. So as far as I understand there is no true process isolation with page faults and dynamic paging.

That’s a shame, it’d be a cool and, afaik, unique feature for this niche.

Maybe Espressif will notice that there are no RV32 chips with MMU so far (at least to my knowledge); we only have 32 bit MCUs or then only 64 bits for the CPUs. Something like Cortex-A7 is missing.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#34

Post by MallocVoidstar »

urba_ wrote: post #26

I don’t trust Espressif’s releases, I am still waiting for ESP32-P4 to hit distributors. It is now more than 2 years and 3rd chip revision

I assume their chips don't really exist until they're actually supported by ESP-IDF. The ESP32-C5 was announced in June 2022, received initial support in -IDF in August 2025, and more complete support in December. It seems to have only recently started getting third party dev boards.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#36

Post by timschmidt »

ldng wrote: post #21
jwr wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoE is not obvious to implement (take it from someone who has done it with a fair share of mistakes), uses more expensive components that normal ethernet, takes up more space on the board, makes passing emissions certification more complex, and is more prone to mistakes that ruin boards in the future, causing support/warranty issues. In other words, a bag of worms: not impossible to handle, but something you would ra…

And what would a better alternative look like ?

I wouldn't call it "better", but the least-effort path among hobbyists and low end gear is often 12v or 24v sent over a pair with Gnd and a forgiving voltage regulator on the other end.

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#37

Post by anymouse123456 »

Since the Snowden leaks in 2013, it just doesn't make sense that *any* foreign customers would put US technology inside their firewall. But they do.

It shocks me even more that any Western customer would do the same with network-connected Chinese chips. But we do.

The Espressif chips are truly incredible value, but what are we doing here?

Is there any doubt that these don't represent a major attack surface if a conflict were to heat up?

If you had network-connected chips of your own design inside every household of your adversary, what could you do with that?

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#38

Post by khalic »

anymouse123456 wrote: post #37

Since the Snowden leaks in 2013, it just doesn't make sense that *any* foreign customers would put US technology inside their firewall. But they do. It shocks me even more that any Western customer would do the same with network-connected Chinese chips. But we do. The Espressif chips are truly incredible value, but what are we doing here? Is there any doubt that these don't represent a major attack surface if a confl…

It’s not like creating a chip gives you unfettered access to it. You _can_ add 0-day flaws and backdoors, but these can be discovered, leaked, etc. Has there been any case of such a backdoor built in consumer chips like theses? I’m not talking about CIA ops like snowden described, that’s supply chain interception. I mean, has anybody ever found such a backdoor?

Re: ESP32-S31: Dual-Core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, and Advanced HMI

#39

Post by matt_trentini »

elcritch wrote: post #7
moepstar wrote: post #3

I believe this is the first ESP to gain Ethernet capability? I totally wish that a board would come with PoE… Because as it is right now, powering a fleet of those with USB power supplies is annoying as fsck…

Nah, ESP32's have had ethernet capability for a while and ESP-IDF supports it well. I've been using one I built for 5+ years now. Unfortunately RMII (ethernet phy) interface takes up a lot of the GPIO pins. This part looks like it'll remedy that issue. There's two ESP32 boards that have been around for a while with PoE: - https://www.tme.com/us/en-us/details/esp32-poe/development-k... - https://wesp32.com/ I'm more h…

Waiting for my ManT1S:

https://www.crowdsupply.com/silicognition/mant1s

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