Raspberry Pi Foundation says its final farewells to 40nm with release of Compute Module 3+
The Rasperry Pi Foundation has updated its Compute Module with better thermals, an updated application processor and bucketloads of flash memory (in Pi terms, at least).
The Compute Module 3+, a System on Module (SoM) board, is part of a hardware family that's been around since 2014 with the launch of the CM1. That original rocked a single-core Arm processor clocked to 700MHz, 512MB RAM and a mighty 4GB of eMMC.
Three years later, the Compute Module 3 put in an appearance with the 1.2GHz processor of the Pi 3 and 1GB RAM. Two years on, and the Compute Module 3+ is carrying on the tradition, adding the Broadcom BCM2837B0 processor from the Pi 3B+ into the mix. [...] power supply limitations will keep the CPU at 1.2GHz instead of the 1.4GHz of the Pi 3B+.
[...] The foundation plans to keep Compute Module 3+ available until "at least" January 2026 and, in words that will be bring joy to Pi fans the world over, stated this is "the last in a line of 40nm-based Raspberry Pi products" indicating a clearing of the decks before the next generation makes an appearance.
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Tom's Hardware is reporting that Raspberry Pi Foundation is increasing production of its $5 Raspberry Pi Zero to meet demand from ventilator manufacturers which are using the board in their designs. The higher end Raspberry Pi boards are also reasonable desktop units for many typical home office uses, so they are being distributed in place of laptops to many working at home for the NHS. The Raspberry Pi is a low wattage single-board computer with convenient input-output hardware suitable for embedded applications but running a full Debian-based GNU/Linux distro, Raspbian.
As the need for ventilators grows, manufacturers are looking for control boards to serve as the brains of their devices. Recently, Intel was reportedly asked to produce 20,000 Broadwell processors to meet demand from medical companies. Because of its production abilities, Raspberry Pi Foundation is able to provide those orders quickly.
"One of the main challenges with rapidly scaling manufacture of products like this is that you may be able to surge production of the air-handling elements, but you still need to provide the control element: often the components you need are on 20-week lead times and (hopefully) we'll be out of the other side of this pandemic by then," said Eben Upton, CEO and Founder of Raspberry Pi. "Raspberry Pi 'builds to stock' rather than 'building to order,' so we generally have products either on-hand or in the pipeline with short lead times."
Even though Raspberry Pi builds to stock, the organization has still experienced a shortage of Raspberry Pi Zero Units, due to demand from consumers as well as the foundation's desire to hold stock for ventilator manufacturers. Upton says that the organization produced 192,000 Zero-line (Pi Zero / Zero W) products in Q1 but plans to increase that number to 250,000 going forward.
The BBC is reporting that Raspberry Pi-based ventilators are currently being tested in several locations. No word yet on how the certification process is going.
Related:
Raspberry Pi will power ventilators for COVID-19 patients
Raspberry Pi's $5 model is powering ventilators to fight coronavirus
Previously:
(2020) Company Prioritizes $15k Ventilators Over Cheaper Model Specified in Contract
(2020) Professional Ventilator Design "Open Sourced" Today by Medtronic
(2019) Interview with Eben Upton on Studies, the Raspberry Pi and IoT
(2019) Raspberry Pi Opens First High Street Store in Cambridge
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Releases Compute Module 3+, the Last 40nm-Based RasPi
(2019) Raspberry Pi Foundation Announces RISC-V Foundation Membership
(2015) Raspberry Pi's Latest Computer Costs Just $5
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @06:44AM (2 children)
What good is a "compute" node if you can't run a Beowolf cluster of those?
How can I run a Beowolf cluster of those? Veeerrryyy ssslllooowww, limited by the speed of 330Mbs [raspi.tv] (40something MB/s) via USB2 [raspberrypi.org] (last linked is hardware spec for the C+ model - PDF warning - see the "peripherals" section).
Why can't they put at least a full 1Gb ethernet on it?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday January 29 2019, @09:03PM (1 child)
Hopefully these limitations can be solved in the upcoming Raspberry Pi 4 and related products.
Whatever die shrink we see could substantially boost performance over 40nm, perhaps to the point where you might actually want to connect to it and "compute".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 29 2019, @10:25PM
Googling raspberry pi cluster [google.com] will show a quite old interest in this. At least as old as 2014 if not earlier (on mobile now, the ducking Google removed custom date range capabilities for mobile, for "better customer experience" no doubt)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @07:52AM (1 child)
Am I reading it wrong, or are the specs for another machine given instead of the one the headline mentions? Have they not changed since?
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:50PM
The biggest change is the introduction of various Flash Memory (Not RAM) size options (4GB, 8GB, 16GB, 32GB). There is also a marked improvement in heat displacement with the new chip. There are no real performance gains made with this updated hardware. Just a slightly more stable chipset with larger sizes available and slight increases in cost for the 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB Flash Memory options.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 29 2019, @12:35PM (1 child)
If yes, that would be a nice change compared with the original rasp pi which requires a proprietary blob.
If no, then you can never own this device, just rent it.
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday January 29 2019, @05:57PM
The Raspberry Pi is about as good as it gets. Unfortunate or not, I'm not terribly certain. Companies like Broadcom, AMD, Intel, etc need to be able to make money on their designs. When those designs are 100% transparent, what's to keep the competition from stealing their ideas? I love the idea of a completely open set of hardware and software. The difference is that with software a bunch of no-names with little to no money can make a difference with just time, experience, dedication and some good ideas. As opposed to the hardware side of things, where you have to invest money in materials, and have time, experience, dedication, etc.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Tuesday January 29 2019, @02:31PM