An Analysis on Clock Speeds in Raspberry Pi Pico and Arduino Uno Microcontrollers

Abstract

Choosing an application-centric microcontroller development board undisputedly increases the efficiency of the system. It impedes on-field failures and improves the quality of research. This paper analyses the Clock speeds of Arduino Uno and Raspberry Pi Pico microcontrollers to test their computation speeds using Mandelbrot Set, a familiar self-recurring fractal object. Arduino Uno is one of the popularly-used microcontrollers in the field of development. Pi Pico is the first and latest Microcontroller from Raspberry Pi family. Though the boards are economic, the latter tends to be very powerful. Hence these microcontrollers are chosen for analysis. The Mandelbrot Set is formed by the microcontrollers on an OLED display using Escape Time (ET) Algorithm. ET Algorithm takes a position (x, y) and recursively calculates the pixels that have to be turned on to render the Mandelbrot set on the display. Initially the boards are tested at their standard clock speeds. Further they are decelerated to under-rated levels to find the deviation in the rate of change of computation with the raise in their core frequencies. The Arduino Uno requires complex on-board hardware modifications with an intensive monitoring setup to work at overclocked frequencies. Hence this board is not tested at overdriven clock speeds. But Pi Pico effortlessly adjusts its core frequency to work at desired computation speeds using its phase-controlled loop. With this parameter, benchmarks and results, one of the two boards is regarded ideal for applications requiring cumulative calculations.