SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
A birthday gift: 2GB Raspberry Pi 4 now only $35
In two days' time, it will be our eighth birthday (or our second, depending on your point of view). Many of you set your alarms and got up early on the morning of 29 February 2012, to order your Raspberry Pi from our newly minted licensee partners, RS Components and Premier Farnell. In the years since, we've sold over 30 million Raspberry Pi computers; we've seen our products used in an incredible range of applications all over the world (and occasionally off it); and we've found our own place in a community of makers, hobbyists, engineers and educators who are changing the world, one project, or one student, at a time.
[...] Which brings us to today's announcement. The fall in RAM prices over the last year has allowed us to cut the price of the 2GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 to $35. Effective immediately, you will be able to buy a no-compromises desktop PC for the same price as Raspberry Pi 1 in 2012. [...] And of course, thanks to inflation, $35 in 2012 is equivalent to nearly $40 today. So effectively you're getting all these improvements, and a $5 price cut.
[...] In line with our commitment to long-term support, the 1GB product will remain available to industrial and commercial customers, at a list price of $35. As there is no price advantage over the 2GB product, we expect most users to opt for the larger-memory variant. [...] The 4GB variant of Raspberry Pi 4 will remain on sale, priced at $55.
In addition to falling RAM prices (which will hopefully continue to fall in the future), there is likely an oversupply of the 2 GB model as the 4 GB model proved to be the most popular.
Also at TechCrunch, Tom's Hardware, PCWorld, and Hackaday.
The USB Type-C resistor issue has been fixed by the latest revision of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B hardware, which is confirmed to be out in the wild. The issue prevented some USB-C power supplies from working with Pi4B:
The Pi Foundation noticed the issue soon after the release of the Raspberry Pi 4, with founder Eben Upton informing The Register in July that the resistor fix would be bundled into a new hardware revision. Following up on the matter earlier this month, The Register was then told by Upton that he expected the revision "to have reached end users by now". The updated SBC also includes the following changes:
- WLCSP SD card voltage switch has been to the top side of the board to minimise the risk of damage.
- Silkscreen tweaks to reduce solder bridging in manufacture.
The new revision remains the same price as the original Raspberry Pi 4. The Pi Foundation is not selling the new revision as a distinct SKU, either. Hence, you may struggle to tell the difference between the two revisions unless you know what you are looking for.
To confirm that you have a new one, run "cat /proc/cpuinfo" and look for revision "c03112".
Multiple revisions of the firmware have lowered power draw, which is now much closer to RPi3B+. As a result, temperatures should be several degrees cooler.
Also at Tom's Hardware and Hackaday.
Previously: Raspberry Pi 4 Model B Launched
Too Hot to Handle? Raspberry Pi 4 Fans Left Wondering If Kit Should Come With a Heatsink
Raspberry Pi 4B CPU Overclocked to 2.147 GHz, GPU at 750 MHz
Interview with Eben Upton on Studies, the Raspberry Pi and IoT
Raspberry Pi Foundation Begins Working on Vulkan Driver
(Score: 2, Insightful) by bobmorning on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:35PM (8 children)
Wonderful devices, between that, Arduinos and the other SBCs it has really enable others to practice and experiment in robotics, home automation, and other geek activities.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by fyngyrz on Thursday February 27 2020, @09:50PM (7 children)
Totally. Great that they fixed that USB-C power problem, too.
These little buggers are just amazing. Dual 4k monitors and all that horsepower and features... and in such a tiny form factor. To an old fossil like myself that started with a teletype (and a paper tape reader) of all things, the future, well... yeah, it's here. :)
--
Keeping a critter in your home?
You're not a "pet owner", you're a guardian.
The animal is not a "pet", it's your ward.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Booga1 on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:12PM (6 children)
Yeah, tell me about it. I got a couple of the Raspberry Pi 3 units to use for security camera, web server(MediaWiki), retro gaming console, media player, etc... They've done everything I've asked of them.
The only down side was the web browsing I do would was a bit much for 1GB of ram and anything more than four tabs could sometimes bog down the device. Now the Raspberry Pi 4 with 4GB of ram handles it like a champ.
The only thing annoying now is Youtube can sometimes get poor frame rates, but that seems to be the fault of Youtube and the browser. Save the video and play it in VLC and it's great, but I'll put up with a bit of stuttering frames occasionally than jump through those hoops.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Thursday February 27 2020, @10:56PM (2 children)
I think they are continuing to improve video acceleration in Chromium, but who knows. Apparently [raspberrypi.org] they have to fiddle with it before Chromium can be updated to v80.
One thing that happens often is 5-10 second freezes in the browser, seemingly not connected to any particular heavy scripting. But it does happen frequently at the beginning of YouTube videos, which try to start playing before the whole page is loaded.
The RPi4 delivers a pretty competent desktop experience, so RPi5 should knock it out of the park in a couple of years with a 30-100% performance increase. They've got a few obvious things they could do: shrink the node from "28nm" to "22/20nm" or "16/14nm" (could be unlikely if "28nm" remains the "value node"), switch from Cortex-A72 to Cortex-A75 (not much improvement and possibly a regression with Cortex-A73), or bump the core count from 4 to 6 (could be tough if they don't shrink the node). They haven't used big.SMALL in any of the Raspberry Pi Broadcom SoCs, unlike the Rockchip RK3399 and other competitors. I would expect them to pivot towards more machine learning performance (Pi is/was intended for computer science education), but they might not improve the GPU from VC6 anytime soon.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 28 2020, @03:50AM (1 child)
I think I recall hearing that the SOC in the pi 4 is the last gen of the Broadcom SOCs. So, a Pi 5 will have to be something completely different. That certainly does open up the possibilities. A Rockchip powered official pi?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 28 2020, @09:33AM
I don't think so. There is a tight relationship between RPF and Broadcom. They've indicated somewhere that the VideoCore VI graphics could stay the same in the next version.
Raspberry Pi Foundation did join the RISC-V Foundation [soylentnews.org], but it seems implausible that they would switch from ARM to RISC-V cores anytime soon, and Broadcom could easily provide those.
What they need to do is get Broadcom to license 3DSoC or contract with Skywater Technology Foundry to create 3D chips within the next 5 years. Because the first SBC to use that will steamroll the competition. A massacre.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Informative) by Freeman on Friday February 28 2020, @12:16AM (1 child)
FYI regarding Raspberry Pi 3.
https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/02/flaw-in-billions-of-wi-fi-devices-left-communications-open-to-eavesdroppng/ [arstechnica.com]
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: 3, Insightful) by Booga1 on Friday February 28 2020, @01:59AM
Good to know. I normally use Ethernet for reliability and performance reasons, but I'll keep this in mind.
(Score: 3, Informative) by fyngyrz on Friday February 28 2020, @02:31PM
I have RPIs running some fairly extensive automation on my aquarium, driving my 3D printer, and inside a couple of classic computer emulations. I also have one in my radio trailer, a nice, low-power unit that gives me serious SDR software capability for nearly nothing compared to a traditional desktop (I write SDR software so this is of particular interest to me.)
The SoCs keep getting better, the RAM keeps getting less expensive, and even the cameras are improving and costs are dropping there as well.
It's a great time to be building out... things. :)
--
Dinosaurs had no pizza.
How did that work out?