Are there other SoC solutions with multiple companies and manufacturers with similar functionality?
ESP32 was also super easy to get to work, and I prefer it to the microchip series, see it as a budget version of the ST chips (uses a lot more power but that's fine if it's not on a power limit), and much easier to source than the chips that are meaningfully better.
So yeah, plenty of vendors of equivalent functionality, just different ecosystems for the firmware, of course RISC-V isn't the same as ARM (which the older ESP32 used) so that introduces some quirks into the toolchain, and of course the vendors chips aren't pin-compatible.
You're definitely making a new board if you swap the microcontroller because it's out of stock, that's nearly impossible to avoid -- your best hope is to pick a vendor with a good track record or just buy all your inventory up front, and if you're super lucky the vendor will sell different versions with the same footprint and basic design with different amounts of RAM and such with different availability so that you can swap chips based on supply chain stuff for short term issues.
But a lot of these chips are still made by TSMC I'm sure, so I'm not sure it really addresses the root of how few companies are at the root of the supply chain.
Compilers are pretty great! I hope it continues to not matter with RISC-V cores =)
There’s no way around it, there’s usually no pin-compatible alternatives in embedded like there are for Core i7 and Core i3. That only works in consumer PC.
This site has gotten extremely aggressive about downvoting for "disagreement" which seems to include minor errors (like with mine, despite paragraphs of correct information in direct response to a clear question) or often even questions. I don't really see how downvoting posts with minor errors encourages learning and hacking, but it definitely makes me reconsider answering questions.
Then if expressif can't deliver, it won't be too much work to switch platforms, especially if you're switching to a more capable platform.
Sure, you'll probably have to respin the PCB and spend a week of late nights porting software, but that's probably still comes out cheaper considering the low probability of expressif chips being unavailable.