Espressif's ESP32-S31 adds Wi-Fi 6, Gigabit Ethernet, and PUF-backed security

Espressif’s new ESP32-S31 is a dual-core 32-bit RISC-V SoC clocked at 320 MHz with a 128-bit SIMD data path, 512 KB SRAM, and DDR PSRAM support. Connectivity is the headline upgrade: 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 LE with LE Audio and Mesh 1.1, Bluetooth Classic, 802.15.4 for Thread and Zigbee, and a 1000 Mbps Ethernet MAC bring wired gigabit speeds to the ESP32 line for the first time.

On the HMI side, the chip targets smart displays and video doorbells with a DVP camera interface, parallel RGB/I8080/MOTO6800 LCD support, hardware JPEG and 2D-DMA acceleration, and up to 14 capacitive touch channels. Dual I2S controllers with hardware-level Bluetooth audio sync aim to remove the software timing hacks that typically plague wireless audio designs.

Security gets a meaningful bump with on-die TRNG and RAM-based PUF for key generation, alongside the usual secure boot, flash/PSRAM encryption, AES/RSA/ECDSA accelerators, and a digital signature peripheral that keeps private keys out of software reach. TEE and APM provide isolation for multi-app deployments. Software support comes through ESP-IDF, ESP-Matter, and a new ESP Private Agents framework pitched at on-device LLM and voice-agent use cases.