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The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B has been launched, despite months of tricky misdirection implying that it wouldn't be on the market until 2020. The technical specifications include two micro HDMI ports, two USB3 ports, two USB2 ports, dual band Wi-fi, Bluetooth 5, Gigabit Ethernet, and either 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB of RAM. Power consumption is noticeably higher than similar earlier models and the power can be supplied over USBC.
From the spec sheet:
- Broadcom BCM2711, Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz
- 1GB ($35), 2GB ($45), or 4GB LPDDR4-2400 SDRAM ($55)
- 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac wireless, Bluetooth 5.0, BLE
- Gigabit Ethernet
- 2 USB 3.0 ports; 2 USB 2.0 ports.
- Raspberry Pi standard 40 pin GPIO header (fully backwards compatible with previous boards)
- 2 × micro-HDMI ports (up to 4kp60 supported)
- 2-lane MIPI DSI display port
- 2-lane MIPI CSI camera port
- 4-pole stereo audio and composite video port
- H.265 (4kp60 decode), H264 (1080p60 decode, 1080p30 encode)
- OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics
- Micro-SD card slot for loading operating system and data storage
- 5V DC via USB-C connector (minimum 3A*)
- 5V DC via GPIO header (minimum 3A*)
- Power over Ethernet (PoE) enabled (requires separate PoE HAT)
- Operating temperature: 0 – 50 degrees C ambient
takyon: Review at Tom's Hardware. Cons: "Key software doesn't work at launch, Poor high-res video playback". Cases for the previous Pi don't work due to the new micro-HDMI ports. Tom's measured nearly ten times better storage performance using one of the new USB 3.0 ports, and the gigabit Ethernet port can actually reach nearly 1 Gbps (943 Mbps vs. 237 Mbps for the previous model).
Also at The Verge and Ars Technica.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 24 2019, @10:41PM (7 children)
Much better hardware out there, for not much more.
Sure they have a great ecosystem, but if you dont need that, then you dont really want a PI.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 25 2019, @12:10AM (6 children)
Well, that was true of the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, yesterday.
Is there "much better" hardware than the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B for "not much more"?
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @10:29AM (4 children)
But the Rock64 has been shipping for 2 years now, fits the original Pi cases (with a hole for the 4th USB port.) It has support for eMMC using the ODROID v1 connector, native 1GBit Ethernet, 1-4GB of LPDDR3, Mali-450 GPU (liability now, but was good enough compared to other boards when released.), 1xUSB 3.0, 2xUSB 2.0, uSD port, onboard 128Mbit SPI flash. It lacks Bluetooth and Wifi, uses a 5v 3A barrel jack (so figure 10 bucks for a PSU on top of the board cost) and has Cortex-A53 cores. For some people these are detrimental, but for those of us who want relatively secure Pi-sized device for 25-45 dollars (1GB, 2GB, 4GB models, markup of 0-400 percent, depending on supplier) that is actually available, then they can't be beat. As an added bonus they have the original Pi-P5 bus in addition to a 40 pin header (which unfortunately has a few different pins due to different SoC functionality.)
If you're not tied to the Pi formfactor or cost, they also have a Rock64Pro with an actual open-ended x4 PCIe port, a Hex Core 4xA53+2xA72 SoC (big brother of the Rock64's SoC), a header for 802.11ac wifi daughtercard, and all the other features of the aforementioned board.
They also have 11 and 14" 1080p Allwinner (Pine64 reworked into a notebook board) based notebooks available for 100 usd before tax and shipping, with a 'Pro' model based on the Rock64Pro in the works, along with a PinePhone. pine64.org for prices and features. The only downside with Pine is unless you with Ameridroid or a local reseller (at a markup), all of the Pine products are being shipped out of Shenzen, which means the potential for customs hassles, particularly if you are in the US. Ameridroid only has the 1-2GB Rock64s and earlier models/accessories in stock as well at a 15+ dollar markup.
The Rock64Pro can be combined with a PCIe bridge card (sold for bitcoin mining) to provide more expansion ports. however since no x4 Bridge cards were developed, only x16 and x1, you would take a 3 lane performance hit by using them. However if you wanted to run a full size graphics card and needed a larger power envelope over the edge connector than the Rock64Pro can provide, it is an option.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday June 25 2019, @01:53PM (3 children)
I was thinking of getting a Pinebook Pro, and I still might at some point, but it looks like I'm going to go with Raspberry Pi 4 (4 GB) first. Before we were having the Pinebook Pro [soylentnews.org] discussion, Eben Upton had fibbed [tomshardware.com] and made it sound like the Pi 4 would not be available until 2020 or later.
The biggest problem with RasPi seems to be the lack of on-board eMMC, and that's not the end of the world.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by canopic jug on Wednesday June 26 2019, @03:28AM (2 children)
The biggest problem with RasPi seems to be the lack of on-board eMMC, and that's not the end of the world.
That's actually a big advantage. Pop in a new microSD card and you have a new system. This is good if you are working on several independent or incompatible projects at the same time. It also makes the system more independent from the hardware because they are no longer (usually) tied to specific devices. Maybe they are tied to specific peripherals, but those are often easy to swap, too, when it comes down to it.
I objected to the lack of on-board eMMC initially. But after working with the boards quite a bit, I've come around. The only major complaint is that for some use-cases you need to tape over the microSD card or buy special cases where they are not readily accessible.
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(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday June 26 2019, @01:21PM (1 child)
That's true, but I've looked at the comments sections for maybe 10 RasPi 4 articles and lack of eMMC keeps coming up. eMMC performance is maybe 3-4x that of the microSD, and more convenient for some scenarios.
I like the idea of swapping OSes with cards, but in practice a lot of users will just have the default distro, on slower NAND. Although maybe people will use the USB 3.0 ports instead.
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(Score: 2) by canopic jug on Wednesday June 26 2019, @03:24PM
It depends on the context. The main goal behind the Raspberry Pi is to get people learning hands-on programming, robotics, electronics, and anything related to computer science. So, as another example, if you have a several classes to teach, you only need enough machines for a single group and then can just swap out cards for each group. It costs less inventory and expense.
But in other situations you'd want a soldered in eMMC unit.
The choice of dual graphics ports for their high-end units was unexpected. I'm now quite interested to see what they will do with their next low-end units.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 25 2019, @05:40PM
Lots of RK3399 boards out there. Yes, some are quite a bit more, others not much more. Tons better hardware.
But yes i do agree if you get too much power in one of these, it sort of blurs the real intent of this stuff. embedded projects.