The ESP32-C3 has officially been announced by Espressif as its first RISC-V only based SoC design. It is Espressif's newest Wi-Fi- and BLE-enabled chip meant for applications where an ESP8266's resources are too low and an ESP32's or ESP32-S2's are too costly.

ESP32-C3 Essentials

The ESP32-C3 offers a low-cost solution for IoT applications while providing an appropriate security level for common security threats. An overview of the chip's internal blocks, grabbed from the datasheet, is shown in Figure 1.
 
ESP32-C3 function blocks
Figure 1: ESP32-C3 function blocks (Source: Espressif).

Key features:
 
  • Single-core, 32-bit, RISC-V-based MCU which is capable of running at 160MHz
  • 400KB of SRAM
  • Integrated 2.4-GHz Wi-Fi
  • Bluetooth LE 5.0 with long-range support
  • Cryptographic Hardware Accelerators
  • 22 programmable GPIOs
  • 2x 12-Bit SAR ADC
  • 3x SPI (supporting SPI, dual SPI, quad SPI and QPI )
  • 2x UART (support RS232, RS485 IrDA with up to 5MBaud)
  • 1x I2C (up to 800kBit)
  • 1x I2S
  • RMT (Remote Control Peripheral)
  • TWAI (CAN 2.0b compatible/ISO 11898-1)
  • PWM

The ESP32-C3 adds security functions like Secure Boot, Flash Encryption, Digital Signature and HMAC Peripheral and a World Controller. The last of these enables two execution environments that are isolated form each other. Depending on the configuration, this can be used to form a Trusted Execution Environment and allows applications to separate tasks that handle sensitive data like DRM services to be isolated form other tasks that could otherwise leak sensible information. Software support will be done through the Espressif ESP-IDF to give access to already-known APIs and software tools. The inclusion of the ESP32 pin matrix function for flexible pin assignment to peripherals, BLE and 400kB of memory at a low cost entry are a welcome addition to the Espressif lineup.

Dev boards

Development boards for the ESP32-C3, the  ESP32-C3-DevKitC-1  and  ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1, have already been announced for sampling. We will put the chip to test when the first samples arrive at Elektor.