RP2040

The RP2040 is a microcontroller designed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It was introduced in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi Pico development board and represents the foundation’s first in-house MCU. The device is built around two ARM Cortex-M0+ cores and is capable of running at up to 133 MHz, delivering a balance of performance and low power consumption for a wide range of embedded applications.

Memory and connectivity are organized around a combination of on‑chip and external resources. The RP2040 includes 264 kilobytes of on‑chip RAM and uses an external flash memory via a Quad SPI interface to store program code and larger data sets. For input and output, the chip provides a USB 1.1 device interface for USB connectivity and a flexible general‑purpose I/O system.

A distinctive feature of the RP2040 is the Programmable I/O (PIO) subsystem. The chip contains two PIO blocks, each with four state machines, which can be programmed to implement custom peripherals and timing-sensitive interfaces without occupying the main CPU cores. This enables precise control of serial protocols, signal timing, and other I/O tasks.

Peripherals include two UARTs, two SPI controllers, two I2C controllers, and eight PWM channels distributed across four PWM slices. The device also includes a 12‑bit analog-to-digital converter with four input channels.

Development for the RP2040 is supported by the Pico Software Development Kit (SDK) for C/C++, with ports and community support for MicroPython, CircuitPython, and other toolchains. The RP2040 has influenced hobbyist and educational microcontroller use by offering an accessible, well-supported platform with substantial I/O and flexible peripherals.