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Isn't the toolchain for the esp almost fully open source (ESP-IDF)? The only part that aren't super open on the esp32 are the radio related firmware and blobs, but those are just not even there in the rp2040 anyways and not related to the toolchain itself.

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If I recall correctly, a not-insignificant issue is (was?) that the ESP is based on the relatively obscure Xtensa microarchitecture - which is poorly supported (if at all) by the regular open-source toolchain. This means you have to use forks provided by Espressif, rather than just using the standard ones provided by your OS.

It's still open-source so a lot better than having to use a proprietary compiler or IDE, but it's a lot more involved than just your regular bundle of C libraries you can use with your normal tooling.

I believe newer ESP32 chips are based on the Risc-V microarchitecture.

Yup. The original ES32, ESP32-S2, and ESP32-S3 use Xtensa, but the ESP32-C2, -C3, -C6, and -H2 use RISC-V.

Unfortunately they don't all have the same feature set, so you'll often still see the Xtensa variants in the wild as they are are simply a better product overall.

The C6 is pretty much a superset of the features of the old Xtensa based models.

All the Espressif RISC-V chips so far are missing the USG-OTG feature of the S2/S3 and RP2040.

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