The RP2350

The board with this chip on it is the "Pico 2".

RP2040 vs RP2350

Dual Cortex-M33 rather than dual Cortex-M0+
optional RISC-V cores (Hazard3 RISC-V)
150 Mhz rather than 133 Mhz
520K of SRAM rather than 264K
16M rather than 2M of external flash
more GPIO (30-48 GPIO pins)
more PIO (12 rather than 8) via programmable state machines
Security (TrustZone) with 8K of OTP.

I'm tired of all this RISC-V hype

I am perfectly happy with ARM and view the whole RISC-V enthusiasm with a cynical eye. I have written at length about this elsewhere. It is "open source", but how does that help me? I am not fabbing silicon, nor am I putting RISC-V cores into FPGA so who cares? It is a "feel good" thing that has never yielded any merit for me.

Now if money was saved by not paying royalties to ARM and those savings were passed on to me, I might see an advantage, but with both ARM and RISC-V cores on this chip, that surely is not happening.

How much of a cut does ARM get? I read that royalties are typically 1-3 percent of a chips price. There is also up-front licensing costs that of course also get passed on to the consumer. I read that Apple pays less than 30 cents for the chips it uses. Let's talk about 2 percent on the RP2040 and call it a $5 chip, that would be 10 cents.

Is my world going to be changed if the price of a Pico drops from $6.50 to $6.40? Hardly. And do I think those savings will immediately be passed on to me? Perhaps, but I wouldn't bet on it.

I also tend to view ARM designs as well proven and refined over many years, and I am less sure about RISC-V. Also (in conclusion), I have spent my blood and tears learning to work with ARM and am reluctant to pay the same dues again with a new architecture unless some big win seems likely.