Farnell introduces Raspberry Pi Pico 2

The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 maintains the footprint of the original Pico but benefits from a significant performance boost thanks to the newly designed RP2350 microcontroller. Compared to its predecessor, the RP2040 microcontroller, which was introduced in 2021, the RP2350 features a 150MHz system clock (up from 133MHz); dual Arm Cortex-M33 cores (an upgrade from dual Arm Cortex-M0+ cores); dual Hazard3 RISC-V cores; 520KB SRAM (double the previous 264KB); 8KB on-chip antifuse OTP storage; a robust security model leveraging Arm TrustZone for Cortex-M; and enhanced power efficiency.

In addition to these upgrades, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 pairs the RP2350 with 4MB of on-board flash memory (doubling the 2MB found in the original Pico) for ample code and data storage. Key security enhancements include OTP for boot configuration and key storage, ROM support for stage 2 bootloader authentication using a public key fingerprint in OTP, and system infrastructure backing Arm TrustZone for Cortex-M.

The RP2350's peripheral set includes 2 UARTs, 2 SPI controllers, 2 I2C controllers, 24 PWM channels, a USB 1.1 controller with host and device support, and 12 PIO state machines. Its enhanced QSPI interface offers a double-banked cache for improved hit bandwidth and supports flash and PSRAM, burst transfers, odd clock divisors, and address translation.

Eben Upton, CEO at Raspberry Pi said: “We are excited to be bringing to market our second-generation microcontroller, RP2350, and the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 single-board computer. Offering higher performance, lower power consumption, and greater security, these products provide our enthusiast and design engineer customers with an unparalleled platform for experimentation and innovation. We look forward to seeing what projects and products they create.”

Simon Wade, Senior Global Product Manager, Single Board Computing, at Farnell, said: “Raspberry Pi products remain as popular as ever with our customers and we are sure that this latest offering, the Raspberry Pi Pico 2, will be no different. The enhanced features deliver a real step-change compared with the original Pico and, with the launch of this innovative product, it is an exciting time for enthusiasts across the globe.”

In line with the release of the RP2350, several third-party products designed specifically for this new microcontroller are also being introduced.

Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is now available to order from Farnell across the EMEA region.