The Raspberry Pi RP2350 dual-core Cortex-M33/RISC-V MCU was first unveiled along with the Raspberry Pi Pico 2 in August 2024. Since then we have covered many Raspberry Pi RP2350 news and boards, but the microcontroller was hard to source for hobbyist and low-volume projects, which partially explains why companies like NextPCB had promotions offering free PCBA prototyping services for RP2350 designs.
The good news is that Raspberry Pi has just announced general availability for the RP2350 microcontrollers starting at $0.80 per unit for the RP2350A in 3,400-piece reels, or $1.1 in single quantity, so anybody can buy the MCUs from their favorite distributor. The British company also announced the RP2354A and RP2354B variants with 2MB of stacked flash memory would soon be available to select partners and mass production will ramp up later this year.
Here’s the current official pricing information for the RP2040 and RP2350 microcontrollers.
| Package version | 13″ reel (3,400 units) | 7″ reel (500 units) | Single unit |
|---|---|---|---|
| RP2040 (7×7mm QFN56) | $0.70 per unit | $0.80 per unit | $1.00 per unit |
| RP2350A (7×7mm QFN60) | $0.80 per unit | $0.90 per unit | $1.10 per unit |
| RP2350B (10×10mm QFN80) | $0.90 per unit | $1.00 per unit | $1.20 per unit |
Users can simply buy the RP2350 microcontroller through one of the approved distributors they typically use to purchase Raspberry Pi MCU boards or SBCs. However, after browsing several distributors, I mostly see bundles of 5 or 10 pieces, and some have not stocked up just yet, so availability may take a few days depending on where you live. Business customers can purchase 13-inch reels from distributors such as Mouser or Digikey.
Besides the NextPCB promotion mentioned in the introduction, JLCPCB’s $12 No-Threshold SMT Coupon for new RP2350 designs is another option to make your board at a discount, which you’ll find on the coupon center page of the PCB manufacturer.
Raspberry Pi has now provided much information about the new RP2354A and RP2354B microcontrollers, but they are just the same as the RP2350A and RP2350B variants with respectively 30 GPIO, a 7x7mm QFN60 package with 30 GPIOs and a 10x10mm QFN80 package with 48 GPIOs. They will allow more compact designs since there’s no need to add an extra flash as long as the 2MB built-in SPI flash is suitable for your application.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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