Pseudonymous YouTuber “electronupdate” has peered deeper than most into the internal workings of Raspberry Pi’s new RP2350 microcontroller — by peeling off its lid and capturing photographs of the silicon the lies beneath.
“Star of the present is the brand new RP2350,” electronupdate writes of their evaluation. “Quite a few modifications [over the RP2040], maybe essentially the most intriguing is 2 Arm [Cortex-]M33 cores or two RISC-V Hazard3 cores. No query that Arm dominates the embedded processor area, nonetheless there’s a challenger on the sidelines: RISC-V. Fairly than taking the chance of constructing a RISC-V [product] they cleverly put each on their subsequent die permitting the shopper to change between architectures if they need. It is a intelligent method of judging market demand with out exposing an excessive amount of value.”
Whereas Raspberry Pi has shared a lot in regards to the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 and the dual-architecture RP2350 microcontroller that powers it since the launch earlier this month, the corporate hasn’t gone deep into analyzing precisely what’s inside that sq. black chip package deal — with electronupdate taking over the problem and de-encapsulating a chip, sadly packaged in a strategy to make non-destructive die imaging unattainable, to research what is going on on inside.
“Identical 40nm [process] because the earlier [Raspberry] Pi Pico [RP2040],” electronupdate notes of their evaluation, which was delivered to our consideration by Adafruit, “however the die is sort of a bit bigger. [It’s a] traditional little bit of design! The facility provide is a buck-boost from Richtek, Attention-grabbing selection because it permits the meeting to be powered from a voltage as little as 1.8V (battery use, maybe?)”
Different highlights from the evaluation, which was made tougher by the attention-grabbing elements being lined by an influence distribution community that wanted cautious elimination, embody recognizing blocks reused from the unique RP2040 (“the [RP2350] very a lot is an incremental design,” electronupdate surmises), an on-die voltage regulator (“I am not fairly certain why they put a voltage regulator on there,” the YouTuber notes), the 4 analog to digital converters (ADCs), and the on-chip reminiscence.
An image taking after preliminary decapping proved disappointing, with most circuitry hidden underneath an influence distribution community. (📷: electronupdate)
This latter was put underneath shut commentary, for one superb motive: the possibility at a money prize. “[Raspberry Pi has] a contest going the place in the event you can learn a secret out of the ROM, I believe, they’ve a bit of prize going,” electronupdate says, referring to a contest launched at DEF CON 32 earlier this month. “A bodily assault is definitely a reasonably profitable method, nonetheless now we have to do selective steel delayering which is definitely considerably refined, however I believe you could possibly take the key out that method.”
The complete tour of the chip is detailed within the video embedded above and on electronupdate’s YouTube channel. Extra data is accessible in a companion weblog put up.