Required ESP32 Chip

[FuadMannan]

I see in the hardware design files that it specifies using a ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8. This includes 8MB of PSRAM, but when I look throughout the code, it does not seem like PSRAM is being utilized other than being checked if it exists.

Is PSRAM being utilized somehow in the firmware? If not, can we use another ESP32 chip with less than 8MB of PSRAM?

[ciruz]

Just my 2 cents. Currently, I’m experimenting with a modified firmware, running it on standalone ESP32 chips connected to my Mac (no sensors, no display, no ASIC), and it works fine with a few adjustments. I might also check if I have a smaller ESP32 module lying around to test the firmware without sensors.

From what I’ve seen in GitHub issues and commits so far, let’s say the APIs change and evolve quite rapidly, and to me, it looks like this happens without much concern for RAM usage or other constraints. So I assume the 8MB PSRAM is mainly there to keep things future-proof and support upcoming features.

[MyOwn2C]

Look up old issues.
There was a release using PSRAM. It bricked Bitaxes made with cheaper ESP32 modules with less/no PSRAM.
Code changed since then.

[Nexus9090]

This is usefult to know.

Is there a compatability table anywhere that shows which devices ESP-Miner is suitable for?

[mutatrum]

We enabled PSRAM shortly after LVGL was implemented. That ate up quite a bit of extra memory, and the firmware got very close to using all of it. It's not strictly needed, but there's no guarantees when the extra ram is actually mandatory. Maybe that's already the case, as quite a few new features have been added. The PSRAM is implicitly used, as it's added to the heap.

See here for more details: #434 (comment)

Using a 2MB or 4MB PSRAM module has other issues, see #826.