| From: Stewart C. Russell via talk <talk@gtalug.org> | It's a little hard to find the exact EP32 module used for that simulation. | That's part of the problem: there are many different chips called ESP32 | /something/, but many of them are incompatible. Some have one core, most have | two. Some have the ability to take a few megabytes of extra external | (slow-ish) RAM, many don't. Some are even RISC V in disguise (the new ESP32-C6 | is fully RISC V) , or have a tiny RISC V acting as an Ultra Low Power | Processor that can do basic electronic logic and while the main processor is | asleep. Yes. Espressif has done a terrible job naming these things. You know the following but others might find it interesting. Beware: LONG These SoCs have an amazing collection of features to interact with devices in the real world. A few parts are not so great (eg. the Analog to Digital Converters seem to have disappointing accuracy). It is in the same ballpark as a Raspberry Pi Pico. ESP32-S? are the ones with the Xtensa main processor(s) ESP32-C? are the ones with the RISCV processors The Xtensa-based one have more compute power. It seems like a reasonable processor. The S3 even has something for accelerating AI computing (I'm haven't looked to see if it is documented). The RISCV-based ones are less expensive and seem to be designed to replace ESP8266 chips. Note the RISCV is 32-bit and doesn't have an MMU as we know it. Not suitable for Linux. Espressif also make a confusing set of modules and those are the things that most boards have. WROOM and WROVER (with external-to-the-chip RAM and ROM) are the main ones. I window shop for these on AliExpress. Most ads are unclear about just what modules they use. The "camera" variant seems like a lot of bang for the buck. Here's an example (I don't know anything about this vendor): <https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003804757059.html> Beware: for this and many other listings you choose a "color" to select the configuration. If you get it wrong, you get a booby prize (eg. only an antenna). The most powerful normal ESP32 board seems to be an ESP32-S3 with 16M of flash and 8M of RAM (often written N16R8). Two USB connectors are nice: one is for programming and the other is for whatever your program wants it to be. Too bad this one requires you to solder the headers: <https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004617322170.html> Color 1: $4.92 C3 Color 2: $9.02 S3 N16R8 Color 3: $7.44 S3 N8R2 | > I wonder if uClinux could be ported to ESP32. But not enough to try! | > It's not clear to me that it would be very useful. | Apparently it can — | https://www.cnx-software.com/2021/07/18/linux-5-0-esp32-processor/ - but it's | doing it via RISC V emulation. I can't see how it would be useful at all, | though That's expedient but wasteful and, as you say, unlikely to be useful. As far as I remember, the Xtensa CPUs have memory protection but not a sufficiently general MMU for UNIX or Linux. They do have enough RAM and ROM for ancient and small UNIX-like systems. A maxed-out PDP-11/45 had 256K of RAM.