Espressif Launches the ESP32-P4-Function-EV-Board, Is Still Silent on ESP32-P4 General Availability
Pre-production chip samples available in the new evaluation board, but there's a couple of caveats to bear in mind.
Espressif has launched an official evaluation board for its ESP32-P4 system-on-chip — though warns that its current stock, built around pre-production samples of the chip, are missing a couple of features that will be present in the final release.
"ESP32-P4-Function-EV-Board is a multimedia development board based on the ESP32-P4 chip," Espressif explains of its latest launch. "With all of its outstanding features, the board is an ideal choice for developing low-cost, high-performance, low-power network-connected audio and video products. The development board is suitable for prototyping a wide range of products, including visual doorbells, network cameras, smart home central control screens, LCD electronic price tags, two-wheel vehicle dashboards, etc."
The board, brought to our attention by CNX Software, has been a long time coming: Espressif unveiled the ESP32-P4 back in January 2023, but has yet to offer finalized parts. The ESP32-P4-Function-EV-Board, then, uses pre-release samples — giving early adopters a chance to go hands-on while Espressif finalizes the design and puts the parts into mass production.
The ESP32-P4 is based around two 32-bit RISC-V processor cores running at up to 400MHz and includes a generous 768kB of static RAM (SRAM) plus vector extensions to accelerate on-board machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) workloads. There's a two-dimensional graphics accelerator and a vision processing unit with hardware acceleration for H.264 and JPEG formats, part of Espressif's positioning of the part as ideal for low-power computer vision tasks.
The evaluation board adds in 32MB of pseudo-static RAM (PSRAM) and 16MB of flash storage, again targeting on-board ML and AI tasks, with MIPI Camera Serial Interface (CSI) and Display Serial Interface (DSI) connectivity. An on-board ESP32-C6-MINI-1 module acts as a communications coprocessor, delivering Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 Low Energy (BLE) connectivity, and there's a Fast Ethernet port for wired connectivity too. Elsewhere on the board is a single USB 2.0 Type-A and a USB 2.0 Type-C port, a microSD Card slot, a 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header, integrated microphone, analog speaker connector, and a second USB Type-C connector for power.
Espressif has already opened orders for the board on its AliExpress store, at $55.44 in a bundle with the board itself, seven-inch 1024×600 capacitive touchscreen DSI panel, a two megapixel CSI camera module, and various cables and connectors. This, however, is based on the ESP32-P4 v0.1, a pre-production sample that has two key issues: the analog to digital converter (ADC) is uncalibrated, and USB JTAG debugging is not available.
More information on the board is available on the Espressif website.