When Raspberry Pi’s new RP2350 MCU was released in 2024, it had a slight issue in that its GPIO pins would leak a significant amount of current when a pin is configured as input with the input buffer enabled. Known as erratum 9 (E9), it has now been addressed per the July 29 Product Change Note from Raspberry Pi for the A4 stepping along with a host of other hardware and software issues.
Although the PCN is for stepping A4, it covers both steppings A3 and A4, with the hardware fixes in A3 and only software (bootrom) fixes present in A4, as confirmed by the updated RP2350 datasheet. It tells us that A3 was an internal development stepping, ergo we should only be seeing the A4 stepping in the wild alongside the original defective A2 stepping.
When we first reported on the E9 bug it was still quite unclear what this issue was about, but nearly a month later it was officially defined as an input mode current leakage issue due to an internal pull-up that was too weak. This silicon-level issue has now finally been addressed in the A3 and thus new public A4 stepping.
Although we still have to see whether this is the end of the E9 saga, this should at least offer a way forward to those who wish to use the RP2350 MCU, but who were balking at the workarounds required for E9 such as external pull-downs.
They’re using the remaining A3 chips on Pico 2 boards, but only A4 chips will be available as parts. The hardware errata are fixed on both, A4 just has bootrom changes to close some of the vulnerabilities the hacking challenge revealed.
The reasoning is likely that people buying Picos aren’t the businesses who’d care about security. Businesses would be buying the singular RP235x chip, not Picos.
“Identification Method to Distinguish Change
The new product can be distinguished by examination of the chip. ”
This is an important change. And then they do not document a proper way to tell the steppings apart in software?
I guess it could be done by reading out the bootrom git tag and comparing it to some not yet known values, but not properly documenting this is not a good idea.
“Software running on the device can also read the CHIP_ID.REVISION register field, or call the rp2350_chip_version() SDK function.”
For those of us confused by the term ‘stepping’, courtesy of my friendly online AI: Chip stepping refers to the versioning system used by manufacturers to track revisions and improvements made to a microprocessor during its lifecycle. Each stepping indicates changes such as bug fixes, performance enhancements, or adjustments in manufacturing processes, typically represented by a combination of letters and numbers.
It’s basically the semiconductor equivalent of a revision.
Often meant to fix bugs/issues and/or to increase production yield or otherwise lower production costs.
i am glad that the pico line is progressing beyond this problem.
but imo the biggest problem was the extremely poor communication around this issue. attempts to deny, hide, and then minimize the problem did no favors to anyone. and so i am rather adamant that this is not a mere nit: “an input mode current leakage issue due to an internal pull-up that was too weak”. that clause is harmful to the community. if you don’t understand the problem well enough to write about it then please don’t write about it!
a stronger pull-up could partially mask the problem in some conditions simply by wasting the current that was being leaked. the strength or weakness of the pull-ups did not have any causative role at all. at this day, especially when it was hackaday that brought to my attention the actual description of the problem, there is no excuse for further spreading the initial misinformation that raspberry used to try to obfuscate the problem in the first place!
So much this. It was not about pullups/down. The most basic high impedance state was not there / working.
Seems like a cocktail of them being caught blindsided by a pretty serious albeit kinda sorta edge-case HW bug that slipped through their internal testing procedures, not wanting to be stuck with inventory since people can easily go into a fearmongering spiral on social media, even if they’re clear and up-front about explaining it even to the average Joe and Jane (basically a variant of the Osborne Effect) , and lastly that they didn’t have any experience dealing with such type of issues (closest being the power regulator on rPi 2 boards resetting the system when exposed to sudden sharp light like a camera flash).
Keep in mind, I’m not excusing their behavior, rather explaining the supposed rationale as I observed it.
I don’t get this take. It took a few weeks for them to do an internal investigation before they came out with an official statement, which correctly diagnosed the issue (rpi never said it was a “too weak pull up resistor!”, but there were various incorrect hypotheses floated by users trying to isolate the problem in the early days.)
It really sounds like you’re blaming them for your own distorted view of the events of the time.
Nice to see that they’re fixing the problems of course. Unfortunately for us simple end users who are buying arduinos in random web shops things don’t look great, because usually the only way to find out the stepping is to buy, wait a month or so for delivery, then find out that it’s not what you wanted.
BTW, are there any more or less standard boards that utilise the larger chips and make available all 48 GPIO pins?
ugh that would be a nuissance for sure, to wait and see which stepping you get. but i checked on adafruit and both the adafruit rp2350 boards (like “feather”) and the official raspberry board “pico 2” have a footer on the ad “Please note: The Adafruit Feather RP2350 HSTX comes with the A2 version of the RP2350, which is affected by the E9 erratum.” hopefully they keep that up to date :)
so i’m optimistic the better vendors will do the right thing. that’s specifically the thing i love about rp2040 / pico, it’s only $4 ($5 for pico 2) even on reputable vendors like adafruit and sparkfun so there isn’t so much incentive to go on the ebay / aliexpress sort of markets. i’m a big fan of pico, a big step up over the stm32 boards i’ve used.
I hear also that this new version is 5V tolerant on the GPIOs, very nice. Also… it would be great if they’d start making TQFP (0.8mm) and/or TSSOP (0.5mm) and/or SOIC (1.27mm) versions, much easier to solder on to your own board designs.
No, all the chips are officially 5v tolerant, even the original stepping. All they did is the extra qualification testing so that they could officially claim the feature in the specification.