Microcontroller Resources

The 8051 ran on 12 MHz and had 128 bytes of RAM. The ESP32-S3 runs on 240 MHz with 512 KB of SRAM and built-in WiFi (plus a vector instruction unit that nobody mentions in the product listing). Both are microcontrollers. The price dropped from $15 to $3. The capability didn’t just improve. It increased by three orders of magnitude. We’ve covered MCU architectures since 1996. Today we focus on the chips inside the security cameras, smart thermostats, and IoT sensors that I install through TruSentry. Not the marketing specs. The actual silicon.