As a loyal supporter of ESP32, I have been following the situation since the release of ESP32S3. I believe that with the improvement of software, now is just the right time to buy it.
For those who are not familiar with ESP32, you can take a look at my previous articles:
An ESP32 You Didn’t Know About
Why is ESP32 So Popular?
ESP32-S3 is an MCU chip that integrates 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5 (LE), supporting Long Range mode. The ESP32-S3 is equipped with a Xtensa® 32-bit LX7 dual-core processor, with a maximum frequency of 240 MHz, built-in 512 KB SRAM (TCM), and has 45 programmable GPIO pins and rich communication interfaces. The ESP32-S3 supports larger capacity high-speed Octal SPI flash and external RAM, allowing for user-configurable data and instruction caches.
—— From the official introduction of Espressif
The positioning of ESP32S3 should be to replace the previous ESP32 chip, upgrading from Xtensa LX6 to LX7, with CPU performance improved by about 15%. Many new features have also been added.
In terms of CoreMark performance, it also outperforms ESP32:
ESP32S3 CoreMark® Score – Single Core, 240 MHz: 613.86 CoreMark; 2.56 CoreMark/MHz – Dual Core, 240 MHz: 1181.60 CoreMark; 4.92 CoreMark/MHz
ESP32 CoreMark® Score – Single Core, 240 MHz: 494.6 CoreMark; 2.06 CoreMark/MHz – Dual Core, 240 MHz: 999.2 CoreMark; 4.16 CoreMark/MHz
It has more than 10 additional usable pins compared to ESP32. A total of 45 usable pins allow for a bit more flexibility in project development.
A significant update is the support for USB1.1 internally in the chip, which is fantastic. This allows for direct bypassing of the USB-to-serial chip and enables more functionalities, such as USB flash drive emulation. Anyone who has used Micro:bit knows how convenient this feature is. The ESP32S3 uses the same solution as the Raspberry Pi Pico. By using CircuitPython firmware, you can achieve USB flash drive emulation, and the programming language required is Python. Currently, CircuitPython officially supports ESP32S3 development boards.
CircuitPython is a programming language developed by the well-known open-source hardware manufacturer Adafruit, which is essentially a modified version of MicroPython, including a large number of libraries from Adafruit’s own modules, making it more convenient to use than MicroPython. There are already hundreds of devices that can use CircuitPython. Its main feature is that any development board that can flash CircuitPython firmware can use the USB flash drive emulation feature. ESP32 cannot use CircuitPython because the chip does not have USB support.
Recently, Espressif has also updated Arduino support for ESP32S3, making it easy to use the S3 chip. It also supports uploading and flashing without a USB-to-serial chip. This means that if you do not need more powerful features, you can completely avoid using the serial chip, or just use an external one without needing to integrate it onto the development board.
In terms of storage, the ESP32S3 chip has built-in 512 KB SRAM and 384 KB ROM storage space, and supports connecting flash and external RAM in various interface forms such as SPI, Dual SPI, QuadSPI, Octal SPI, QPI, and OPI. The module can integrate a maximum of 32MB Flash and supports faster Octal SPI speeds, but it will occupy more pins.
The ESP32-S3 also adds vector instructions for accelerating neural network computations and signal processing. AI developers can use these vector instructions with the ESP-DSP and ESP-NN libraries for high-performance applications such as image recognition, voice wake-up, and recognition. ESP-WHO and ESP-Skainet will also support this feature.
Of course, S3 also has its drawbacks, as it only supports BLE communication for Bluetooth and is not full-featured Bluetooth, which means it cannot be used as a Bluetooth speaker or similar devices. You can see a trend where Espressif’s new development boards only support BLE. It seems they have completely abandoned full-featured Bluetooth. Although I don’t think it’s very important, it may affect some projects that require similar functionalities, which cannot switch to S3.
Overall, for MCU development boards, performance is not the top priority. The ESP32S3 adds many new features, making our development more convenient and increasing operational efficiency and application scope, making it a great successor to ESP32. I believe that more and more people will use ESP32S3 in the future, and ESP32 will gradually fade into history.
Recently, Chip Board Workshop has also launched development boards based on ESP32S3, so if you’re interested, you can take a look.
01Studio pyWiFi-ESP32-S3
https://m.tb.cn/h.ftsvjpA?tk=IPpB2mebrEb
Recently, we created a development board selection website. Although it is not yet complete, we have already recorded around 300 development boards. If you’re interested or have any needs, you can check out our selection website, and if you have any good suggestions, feel free to share them in the group or leave us a message.
We have recently launched a Raspberry Pi replacement section, so if you’re interested, you can check it out.
Our website’s domain is: findboard.cn
(We have not yet adapted the mobile version, so if you’re accessing from your phone, the experience may not be very satisfying. We recommend using a computer browser for better viewing)