I’ve been a fan of the ESP8266 low cost, high powered IoT platform and their makers, Espressif just announced that they’ll be introducing a new chip named the ESP32 soon. It is not just a new module with the ESP8266 on it, but a whole new chip featuring many improvements.
The improvements are among others:
- Faster WiFi connection (HT40 speed or 144.4Mbps)
- Bluetooth Low Energy
- Dual core processor made up out of 2 Tensilica L108 processors clocked at up to 160MHz (Same maximum frequency as the current ESP8266)
- Low power improvements that allow to do certain operations in deep sleep mode
- More peripherals such as capacitive touch, ADCs, DACs, I2C. UART, SPI, SDIO, I2S, RMII, PMW, etc… but no USB.
- A lot more RAM with a total of ~400 KB on-chip RAM
- On board hardware for hardware accelerated security using AES and SSL and the promise of EspressIf for simpler APIs.
The letter of Espressif further promises that beta testing will start soon with about 200 applications boards to be sent out. Alos the price is going to be a bit higher then the ESP8266 but not by much. Exciting times!