[anyoneamous]

Are there really significant use-cases which require both a higher performance processor and GPIO pins? I imagine at this point there is value in splitting the product line to tailor towards "mini Arm server", and "IoT/robotics" users separately.

[ajsnigrutin]

Yes, a lot. Also, the GPIO pins are there just because they are, and why not? There's enough pins, why not route them out?

You need gpio pins for random kiosks (web access, photo printing/scanning, etc. to control the leds, lights, etc., even coin slots), retro arcades (to get input from joysticks, buttons, etc.), robotics (camera for video, a lot of cpu for processing, gpio pins to control the movement), advanced sensor boards (where the processing is done on the device), smart home stuff, etc.

"Back in my time", we used to use parallel ports for that... 8 very limited gpios were enough to drive a few leds or read some data from an external device.

[oaiey]

Application Frameworks tend to become quite heavy (think Electron on X11, event QT) where most activity on the processor is rendering and business logic wise in some UI flows while once in a while, local data is collected (like temperature, humidity or your custom sensors).

Think a terminal in a Museum with lights, think a local hotspots with sensor and connected (normal tablets), think a ECG machine, ... . Use Cases there are enough, whether other criteria (like quality/reliability) are sufficent, is another story).

[CptanPanic]

They do make 2 lower power boards, the Zero and the RP2040

[marius-sw]

I use it with a LTE addon board to process/generate phone call audio locally.

[bryancoxwell]

Out of curiosity could you expand on that please?