April 13, 2026 -
By Susan Nordyk, EDN
Espressif Systems is sampling its ESP32-S31 dual-core RISC-V SoC with Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4, Thread, Zigbee, and Ethernet. Rich HMI and security features make it well-suited for IoT applications such as consumer and industrial appliances, voice-controlled devices, and automation systems.
Running at 320 MHz, the ESP32-S31’s 32-bit RISC-V microcontroller achieves 6.86 CoreMark/MHz and integrates a memory management unit and 60 GPIOs for design flexibility. One of its two cores features a 128-bit-wide SIMD data path for fast parallel processing. Memory resources comprise 512 KB SRAM and support for 250-MHz, 8-bit DDR PSRAM, with concurrent flash and PSRAM access. External memory expansion (up to octal SPI) further supports memory-intensive multimedia and AI/ML workloads at the edge.