AI chips are now available with Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Thread support for smart home, factory, and connected devices.
Espressif Systems has started mass production of its ESP32-S31 system-on-chip (SoC), which is now available for purchase. The chip is designed for artificial intelligence of things (AIoT) applications such as smart home hubs, smart speakers, edge artificial intelligence (AI) devices, and industrial automation systems.
The ESP32-S31 features a dual-core 32-bit reduced instruction set computing five (RISC-V) processor running at up to 320MHz. One of the cores includes a 128-bit data path and single instruction, multiple data (SIMD) instructions to speed up data processing. The chip also includes a 40MHz low-power coprocessor, 512KB of on-chip static random access memory (SRAM), support for up to 250MHz double data rate pseudo-static random access memory (DDR PSRAM), and as many as 60 general-purpose input/output (GPIOs).
For connectivity, the SoC combines Wi-Fi 6 (2.4GHz), Bluetooth 5.4 with LE Audio and Classic BR/EDR, IEEE 802.15.4 for Zigbee and Thread, and a Gigabit Ethernet MAC. It also supports Matter over both Wi-Fi and Thread for smart home devices.
The chip supports camera and display interfaces for human-machine interaction, including digital video port (DVP) cameras, multiple liquid crystal display (LCD) types, and up to 14 capacitive touch channels. It also integrates hardware accelerators for JPEG encoding/decoding and 2D graphics, while dual I2S controllers enable hardware-level Bluetooth audio synchronization.
ESP32-S31 is supported by Espressif’s ESP-IDF development framework and works with software platforms such as ESP-Matter, ESP-GMF, ESP-BLE-MESH, and ESP-BLE-AUDIO. It can also be used as a connectivity coprocessor through ESP-Hosted and ESP-AT.
The ESP32-S31 is now available for developers and product designers through Espressif’s sales and distribution channels, along with documentation, software resources, example projects, and development tools.
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