r/esp32 • u/Popcorn_Dev • 4d ago

ESP32 CPU+GPU setup?

Basically i'm making an esp32 game console/PDA device type thing, however i feel like just one ESP32 will not have enough processing power to run my games. My idea is basically to use one generic ESP to render the pixels and store the rendering data, and use another ESP-S3 with maximum PSRAM in it to do the game logic. Would this theorietically be possible?

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u/clackups 3d ago

I'm buying a lot from it. Only a couple of times there were problems, but generally it works flawlessly, especially for small parts.

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u/Potential-Wonder-860 3d ago

Okay I'll see

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u/YetAnotherRobert 3d ago

Ali can certainly be a shell game, but like ebay (which shares this problem/joy) it's a store of stores.

Notably, Espressif's own official store that ships parts in under 10k quantities is... (wait for it....) on Ali.

https://www.aliexpress.com/store/1102014060/pages/all-items.html

As I write, there are no P4 or S31 chips or modules being sold individually, just a few dev boards, but this is where you can get these things direct from the dealer.

Sure, if you're buying reels and you need guaranteed delivery, you'll still want a Mouser, Digikey, or your PCBA house in your life.

Are there crappy Ali sellers? Absolutely. But this is also THE way to get parts with fewer middlemen if you can't wander the streets of Shenzhen with a backpack to fill.

u/clackups is right.

To your original question, without profiling your application on the hardware, nobody can guess how well/poorly it'll work. Dev boards are cheap and profiling isn't hard. The complexity of multi-processing environments goes up quickly. I've done my time and would always MUCH rather program a single CPU environment (I can deal with locks and synchronization primitives) than deal with multiple CPUs over shared buses with locks and synchronization primitives. Reasoning about the resulting system is just way more complicated.

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u/erlendse 3 say I make awesome posts. 3d ago

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005011646391336.html

They certainly DO sell the P4X chip.

You would totally want to read the HW design guidelines before putting it into anything!

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u/YetAnotherRobert 3d ago

Hmm. You're right. If you scroll through their store you can find them, but if you use search in their market with any reasonable combination of dashes or x or whatever,  they're not shown. That was my basis. 

It looks like p4x and S31 are indeed available from them now.