ESP32-P4

4 Articles

ESP32-P4 Powers Retro Handheld After A Transplant

January 14, 2026 by 8 Comments

The ESP32-P4 is the new hotness on the microcontroller market. With RISC-V architecture and two cores running 400 MHz, to ears of a certain vintage it sounds more like the heart of a Unix workstation than a traditional MCU. Time’s a funny thing like that. [DynaMight] was looking for an excuse to play with this powerful new system on a chip, so put together what he calls the GB300-P4: a commercial handheld game console with an Expressif brain transplant.

Older ESP32 chips weren’t quite up to 16-bit emulation, but that hadn’t stopped people trying; the RetroGo project by [ducalex] already has an SNES and Genesis/Mega Drive emulation mode, along with all the 8-bit you could ask for. But the higher-tech consoles can run a bit slow in emulation on other ESP32 chips. [DynaMight] wanted to see if the P4 performed better, and to no ones surprise, it did.

If the build quality on this handheld looks suspiciously professional, that’s because it is: [DynaMight] started with a GB300, a commercial emulator platform. Since the ESP32-P4 is replacing a MIPS chip clocked at 914 MHz in the original — which sounds even more like the heart of a Unix workstation, come to think of it — the machine probably doesn’t have better performance than it did from factory unless its code was terribly un-optimized. In this case, performance was not the point. The point was to have a handheld running RetroGo on this specific chip, which the project has evidently accomplished with flying colours. If you’ve got a GB300 you’d rather put an “Expressif Inside” sticker on, the project is on github. Otherwise you can check out the demo video below. (DOOM starts at 1:29, because of course it runs DOOM.)

The last P4 project we featured was a Quadra emulator; we expect to see a lot of projects with this chip in the new year, and they’re not all going to be retrocomputer-related, we’re sure. If you’re cooking up something using the new ESP32, or know someone who is, you know what to do.

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A Much Faster Mac On A Microcontroller

January 11, 2026 by 6 Comments

Emulating older computers on microcontrollers has been a staple of retrocomputing for many years now, with most 8-bit and some 16-bit machines available on Atmel, ARM, or ESP32 platforms. But there’s always been a horsepower limit, a point beyond which a microcontroller is no longer enough, and a “proper” computer is needed. One of those barriers now appears to have been broken, as microcontroller-based emulation moves into the 32-bit era. [Amcchord] has the Basilisk II emulator ported to the ESP32-P4 platform, providing a 68040 Mac able to run OS8.1. This early-1990s-spec machine might not seem like much in 2026, but it represents a major step forward.

The hardware it uses is the M5Stack Tab5, and it provides an emulated Mac with up to 16 MB of memory. Remember, in 1992 this would have been a high-spec machine. It manages a 15 frames per second refresh rate, which is adequate for productivity applications. The emulator uses the Tab5’s touchscreen to emulate the Mac mouse alongside support for USB input devices. To 1990 hackers, it’s almost the Mac tablet you didn’t know you would want in the future.

We like this project, both because it’s advancing the art of emulation on microcontrollers, and also because it delivers a computer that’s useful for some of the things you might have done with a Mac in 1992 and could even do today. Pulling this out on the train back then would have blown people’s minds. There’s even a chance that MacOS on something like this would turn a few heads in 2026. It’s certainly not the first emulated Mac we’ve seen though.

One To Watch For In 2025: Tanmatsu

January 7, 2025 by 20 Comments

If you’ve used the Espressif series of processors, perhaps you’ll have heard of their upcoming ESP32-P4. This is an application processor, with dual RISC-V cores at 400 MHz, and save for a lack of an MMU, a spec sheet much closer to the kind of silicon you’d find in single board computers with pretensions towards being a mini-PC.

It was announced a year ago and there have been limited numbers of pre-release versions of the chip available to developers, but thus far there have been very few boards featuring it. We’re excited then to note that a P4-based board we’ve been watching for a while is finally breaking cover, and what’s more, you can now pre-order one.

The Tanmatsu (Japanese for “Terminal”) is an all-in-one palmtop computer for hackers, with a QWERTY keyboard and an 800×480 DSI display. It’s designed with plenty of expansion in mind, and it’s got space on board for a LoRa radio. The reason we’re interested is that it comes from some of our friends in the world of event badges, so we’ve seen and handled real working prototypes, and we know that its makers come from a team with a proven record in manufacture and delivery of working hardware. The prototype we saw had hardware that was very close to the final version, and an operating system and software that was still under development but on track for the April release of the device. It will be fully open-source in both hardware and software.

We liked what we saw and have pre-ordered one ourselves, so we’ll be sure to bring you a closer look when it arrives.

Espressif’s ESP32-P4 Application Processor: Details Begin To Emerge

April 2, 2024 by 56 Comments

Every now and then there’s a part that comes along which is hotly anticipated, but which understandably its manufacturer remains tight-lipped about in order to preserve maximum impact surrounding its launch. Right now that’s Espressif’s ESP32-P4: a powerful application processor with dual-core 400 MHz and a single-core low power 40 MHz RISC-V processors. Interestingly it doesn’t appear to have the radios which have been a feature of previous ESP parts, but it makes up for those with a much more comprehensive array of peripherals.

Some details are beginning to emerge, whether from leaks or in preparation for launch, including the first signs of support in their JTAG tool, and a glimpse in a video from another Chinese company of a development board. We got our hopes up a little when we saw the P4 appearing in some Espressif documentation, but on closer examination there’s nothing there yet about the interesting new peripherals.

Looking at the dev board and the video we can see some of what the thing is capable of as it drives a large touchscreen and a camera. There are two MIPI DSI/CSI ports on  the PCB, as well as three USB ports and a sound codec. A more run-of-the-mill ESP32-C3 is present we think to provide wireless networking, and there’s a fourth USB port which we are fairly certain is in fact only for serial communications via a what our best blurry photograph reading tells us is a Silicon Labs USB-to-serial chip. Finally there’s large Raspberry Pi-style header which appears to carry all the GPIOs and other pins. We’ve placed the video below the break, if you see anything we’ve missed please tell us in the comments.

We first covered this chip back in January, and then as now we’re looking forward to seeing what our community does with it.

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