Description
The Raspberry Pi Pico 2 is the newest version of the popular microcontroller developed by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. It features their next generation chip, the RP2350. The RP2350 has a higher core clock speed, double the on-chip SRAM, double the on-board flash memory, more powerful Arm cores, optional RISC-V cores, new security features, and more!
Pico 2 uses an on-board buck-boost SMPS which is able to generate the required 3.3 volts (to power RP2350 and external circuitry) from a wide range of input voltages (~1.8 to 5.5V). This allows significant flexibility in powering the unit from various sources such as a single Lithium-Ion cell, or 3 AA cells in series. Battery chargers can also be very easily integrated with the Pico powerchain.
The RP2350 is unique as it provides a comprehensive security architecture, built around Arm TrustZone for Cortex-M, and incorporating signed boot, 8KB of antifuse OTP for key storage, SHA-256 acceleration, a hardware TRNG, and fast glitch detectors. These features, including the secure boot ROM, are extensively documented and available to all users without restriction. This transparent approach, which contrasts with the “security through obscurity” offered by legacy vendors, allows professional users to integrate RP2350, and Raspberry Pi Pico 2, into products with confidence.
Pico uses either soldered 0.1″ pin-headers (it is one 0.1″ pitch wider than a standard 40-pin DIP package) or can be used as a surface mountable “module”, as the user IO pins are also castellated. There are SMT pads underneath the USB connector and BOOTSEL button, which allow these signals to be accessed if used as a reflow-soldered SMT module.