I think the ace up the sleeve is PIO; I've seen so many weird and wonderful use cases for the Pico/RP-chips enabled by this feature, that don't seem replicable on other $1-class microcontrollers.
replyWow thanks, this is definetely something I have to investigate. Maybe the Sipeed Maix SDK provides something similar for the LicheeRV Nano.
replyI'm currently prototyping a tiny portable audio player[1] which battery life could benefit a lot from this.
I'd rather have the Linux SOC and a $0.50-$1 FPGA (Renesas ForgeFPGA, Gowin, Efinix, whatever) nearby.
reply> $0.50-$1 FPGA
replyno such thing, 5V tolerant buffers will run you more than that
The ICE40s start well under $2 even in moderate quantities. They’re 3V3, not 5V0, but for most applications these days that’s an advantage.
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