I like the RP2040

> At a minimum, the next version of RP2040 needs to include on-board Flash / on-board programming. This is something _every_ project needs (RP2040 needs to run its code off of _something_ anyway). The fact that it ships flash-free is incredibly absurd to me at least.

You might get your wish there with their next chips, their last investor report revealed that it will be the "RP235x family". Based on the naming scheme they established with the RP2040 that would be two Cortex-M3 cores with ~512kb RAM, and the "X" placeholder being the amount of onboard flash where the RP2040 had a "0" for "no flash", so that implies there will be a range of models with different amounts of integrated flash.

Espressif sell bare chips, modules with castellations for soldering to a PCB, and complete boards that typically contain a module. Some 3rd-party boards use a bare chip. Some 3rd-party boards also have castellations, as do Picos sold without pre-soldered headers. 3rd-party modules are also a thing.

Here's a pic of a module and several boards that demonstrates all of that.

https://imgur.com/a/yxjG8vh

I much prefer the ESP32, the RP2040 doesn't even have WiFi or bluetooth, you would think every microcontroller should have those things these days.

probably so, but crote was talking about external fram chips

the msp430fr4132 you linked costs 160¢ in quantity 35, which is actually considerably cheaper than comparable flash-based chips like the msp430f233 https://www.digikey.com/en/products/detail/texas-instruments... which is 500¢ in quantity 25. so that's maybe one reason people would use fram: evidently it's cheaper than nor? but i'm pretty sure there are μcs with 8k of nor flash that are cheaper than that and in fact cheaper than the price difference. is this pricing policy some sort of loss leader by ti to drive fram adoption? it seems unlikely. does using fram instead of nor make it cheaper for ti to make the chip? surely 8k of nor couldn't account for such a large cost

on further investigation, i don't find μcs with 8k of nor flash that are cheaper than that, at least in stock at digi-key and still in production. https://www.digikey.com/en/products/filter/embedded/microcon... is the link to my search, which i trust hn will abbreviate in a useful way. but lcsc has the ch32v203 in stock for 39¢ in quantity 100 https://www.lcsc.com/product-detail/Microcontroller-Units-MC... and that has 20k of sram, 64k of flash (presumably nor!), and 24 gpios. that's half the gpios of the ti chip, but i believe my digi-key search linked above was not limited by pin count

so maybe the only reason fram costs more is that ti doesn't license the fram patents to chinese companies? it still beggars belief that ti (and microchip, st, etc.) would be spending three dollars a chip on 8k of nor, or even three dollars a chip divided by two layers of profit margin

Back a few years ago, due to chip shortages I was forced to use the RP2040 on an industrial project. No option really.

The first problem with the chip is that it has zero security. Not important for hobbyist, I get it, however, for professional applications, this can be very important.

Not, it isn't always about not wanting people to read your code. The application in question was a networked industrial controller with a thousand nodes. At a minimum, there's a need to ensure that the code and data cannot be altered. External memory does not allow for this. Our customer understood supply chain issues and agreed to accept the RP2040 design provided we replaced all nodes (at a cost) once a non-RP2040 node could be manufactured.

Before I talk about the other problem I have to admit not having looked at the RP2040 ecosystem for about two years. No idea if this has changed.

The other problem is that the RP2040 team was --again, don't know if this changed-- down-right hostile about Windows. They would respond to requests for better Windows support with moronic statement like (paraphrasing) "Just switch to Linux. It isn't that difficult".

These statements were both tone-deaf and ignorant of realities out there. When you start dealing with non-trivial, non-hobby designs, there's a need for practices such as PLM (Product Lifecycle Management). When your entire engineering organization is using CAD, CAM, EDA and other tools rooted in the Windows ecosystem, you might not have the freedom to switch to Linux just because you bought a little $0.50 chip. It doesn't work that way.

Even worse, if we did that, we would be forced to store a full VM with the working Linux distribution and RP2040 toolchain with every single release of the design. Note I did not say "software". I am talking about mechanical, electrical, optical, multi-board firmware with different processors, tests, manufacturing, manufacturing testing, etc.

In other words, the ill-informed "just switch to Linux" attitude simply revealed that --at least at that time-- this organization did not understand the professional/industrial embedded world in the way companies like ST and others actually do.

The net result was that, as much as the chip was super-interesting, we dropped it like a hot potato as soon as we could and moved back to the STM ecosystem, where the chip provider doesn't think that asking us to upend our entire workflow for single chip is a sensible suggestion.