Espressif Systems releases RISC-V SoC ESP32-C6 with Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 (LE)

On April 9, 2021, Espressif Systems (688018.SH) announced the launch of another new product in the ESP32-C series, the ESP32-C6, which supports Wi-Fi 6 for the first time. It is understood that this is also very likely to be the first MCU of this type released worldwide by the entire industry.

The world's first RISC-V SoC ESP32-C6 with Wi-Fi 6 + Bluetooth 5 (LE)

The CPU, memory and security performance of ESP32-C6 are similar to those of ESP32-C3. It is equipped with a RISC-V 32-bit single-core processor with a clock frequency of up to 160 MHz, built-in 400 KB SRAM, 384 KB ROM, and supports multiple external SPI, Dual SPI, Quad SPI, QPI flash. ESP32-C6 has 22 programmable GPIO pins and supports ADC, SPI, UART, I2C, I2S, RMT, TWAI and PWM.

ESP32-C6 Functional Block Diagram

ESP32-C6 is unique in that it provides support for the 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6 protocol (802.11ax) and is backward compatible with 802.11 b/g/n. To optimize and improve the performance of IoT devices, ESP32-C6 supports the 20 MHz channel bandwidth only mode of 802.11ax and the 20/40 MHz bandwidth of the 802.11b/g/n protocol. In addition, 802.11ax also supports the Station mode, providing devices with higher transmission rates and lower power consumption. Bluetooth 5 (LE) can achieve long-distance communication based on Advertising Extensions and Coded PHY. It also supports 2 Mbps PHY for increased transmission rates and data throughput.

802.11ax adds a variety of features to the existing Wi-Fi standard. Espressif selected the parts that help improve the performance of IoT devices for the design and development of ESP32-C6. ESP32-C6 supports uplink and downlink Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) access and downlink Multi-User Multiple Output Multiple Input (MU-MIMO) access mechanism, both of which can achieve high efficiency and low latency in congested wireless network environments. Another important feature of the 802.11ax protocol is the Target Wake Time (TWT), which allows devices to extend their sleep time with the assistance of Wi-Fi access points that support 802.11ax. This feature will allow ESP32-C6 users to build battery-powered IoT devices that can be used for years based on battery power and always remain connected.

Espressif provides comprehensive security mechanisms and protection measures for IoT devices to ensure that the devices have reliable security performance at both the hardware and software levels. ESP32-C6 supports secure boot based on the RSA-3072 algorithm, flash encryption based on the AES-128-XTS algorithm, digital signatures and HMAC modules for protecting device identity security, and cryptographic accelerators for improving performance. These security mechanisms ensure that devices built with ESP32-C6 have a high standard of security.

ESP32-C6 still uses Espressif's mature IoT development framework ESP-IDF. ESP-IDF has successfully enabled hundreds of millions of IoT devices, and ESP users can easily build ESP32-C6 applications based on a familiar development platform. If users want to use ESP32-C6 as a coprocessor for an external host, they can choose Espressif's ESP-Hosted and ESP-AT firmware.