What would you like to see in The Next Chip?

[Jakobsen]

Hi Sprite

Interesting feedback from all and nice initiative from Espressif.

I suggest that you add a TDM hardware block for multi channel audio distribution. It expands the I2S 2 ch limits and make system integration easy on software / audio converter/amplifier side of things. We do see a demand for multi channel audio. Right now that is solved with multi I2S interfaces and at the TCP/IP layer.

Also please take a look on the full Tencillica DSP instruction pick what you can get (vs cost) to increase audio processing through put.

Thanks - Keep up your work

Jorgen Jakobsen

[ESP_Sprite]

TDM: Will look at that. Maybe if it's easy to e.g. integrate in the current I2S controller, we can have this done pretty quickly.

Ethernet PHY: I'd love to see this and I'll ask the chip guys, but don't hold your breath on this one... as far as I know, it needs some pretty specific stuff on silicon and may not be compatible with our process.

Modbus: As far as I can see, Modbus doesn't describe a physical layer, rather a protocol that you can tunnel over TCP/IP or serial (RS232/RS458) support. What, specifically, would you like to see here?

Failsafe boot code segment: You can do this by write-protecting the bootloader and factory partition of the flash. We do not have official support for this yet, but a few well-placed commands to the flash chip can disable writing to the bootloader and factory partition; you could then also modify the bootloader to always boot into the factory partition if e.g. a certain button is pressed.

DSP instructions: I'll see what I can do, but do not hold your breath: one issue is that (iirc) gcc does not support these instructions and Cadence keeps their instruction set documentation pretty close to their chest (=NDAs).

[riklaunim]

Support for MIPI DSI displays could be handy (most tablet, phone alike displays). Some STMs support it. Alongside other multimedia/image/camera features it would likely have to be a specialized chip on its own.

[tuskiomi]

Hello, I'm quite new to the Espressif scene, but I'm a big fan of the work. I have two requests for the next Chip. One is software, one is hardware.

The Hardware request is simply more ROM and/or builtin flash memory. My preference would be between 32 and 128 MB of flash, or 8 and 64 MB of ROM. The purpose of this is for when I am logging important data, I'm also using valuable CPU computations, and combining that with a full serial buffer causes loss of data acquisition.

The software request is for the next module to have native support to be recognized as an SD Card. This is so I can take my ESP 32 devices, and plug them into my PC for easy data downloading. I Imagine that the SD interface is trademarked, though. In other words, USB Host+Device integration would be just as acceptable.

[ESP_Sprite]

MIPI DSI: If you're in real need of it, the ESP32 can actually fake MIPI compatibility with an external flipflop and some resistors. I have that working now, will publish the project eventually. Agreed that compatibility can be useful; will take a look at it.

Larger flash ROM for data: You are aware that you can add an external SPI flash to the ESP32 and control that with the built-in SPI driver? Alternatively, we have a pretty nice SD-card peripheral and sdriver.

SD-card: We do have SDIO slave support, so in theory you could be able to plug in the ESP32 into your PC already. We don't really have a workflow to go along with it when you want to use that to develop your standalone ESP32 application, however.

[hassan789]

ESP32 HW Additions, Wishlist
- UART on the ULP
- low power wifi (~300uA @ DTIM3, or lower?)
- better debugging!

[BuddyCasino]

+1 for TDM and DSP instructions. Its essential for getting smart speakers right.

[nimish]

Wishlist:

5GHz WiFi
BT 5
USB 2.0 / USB-C PHY
Battery Charging
CapSense

Basically, everything from a PSoC

[ESP_Sprite]

You are aware the ESP32 already does capsense?

[samsam]

"Battery Charging" is nice to have, but how realistic is to embed it in this tiny chip as there is plenty of power to transfer/dissipate there? But maybe some battery management circuit(that works even in deep sleep) is feasible to embed and left power MOSFET etc. heavy loads outside ...
The other things I'm currently missing in the esp32 are the USB, 16bit DAC ... and more IO's but the last one I realise maybe is not feasible