Arm Acquires Minority Stake in Raspberry Pi
Arm Holdings plc today announced that it has made a strategic investment, a minority stake in Raspberry Pi Ltd — the arm of Raspberry Pi responsible for the new Raspberry Pi 5 and past Raspberry Pi products.
[...] "Arm technology has always been central to the platforms we create, and this investment is an important milestone in our longstanding partnership," said Eben Upton, CEO, Raspberry Pi.
[...] Arm's minority stake in Raspberry Pi Ltd also shows a firm commitment to the continuation of Arm CPUs in future Raspberry Pis. With the rise of RISC-V CPUs in devices ranging from $9 to hundreds of dollars it is clear to see that we will not be seeing a RISC-V based Raspberry Pi for the foreseeable future.
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Vlogger Jeff Geerling has an analysis of rumors of a future IPO for Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd.
But long-term, will Eben's vision for what makes Raspberry Pi change? Will there be turnover and some of the people who make the Pi a joy to use be gone?
Will the software side start leaning on subscriptions to increase revenues to make shareholders happy?
And ultimately, could Eben be replaced, and would that change things? Yes, probably, but I won't speculating about any that here. See my blog post about enshittification from last month if you wanna read more about that topic.
What I will do is answer some misconceptions I've seen about Raspberry Pi and the IPO.
The Register covered the IPO discussion the other day and while bankers have been appointed to the task, the CEO asserts that nothing will change.
"The business is in a much better place than it was last time we looked at it. We partly stopped because the markets got bad. And we partly stopped because our business became unpredictable."
"Unpredictable" is an understatement for many who attempted to acquire certain models of the computer during the supply chain crunches of recent years. "The public markets value predictability as much as they value performance," said Upton.
Previously:
(2023) Arm Acquires Minority Stake in Raspberry Pi
(2023) Eben Upton Interview on Raspberry Pi Availability Update and Painful Decisions
(2023) Raspberry Pi Produced 10 Million RP2040s in 2021, More Pi Stores Likely
(2022) 10 Years of Raspberry Pi: the $25 Computer Has Come a Long Way
(2021) Raspberry Pi Raises Price for First Time, Reintroduces 1 GB Model for $35
... and many more.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Rich on Friday November 03 2023, @08:04PM (2 children)
From the article: ' ... a vision to ... experience ... new IoT solutions,” said Paul Williamson, SVP and GM, Internet of Things Line of Business'
Upton should follow up with a press release "We apologize for the bullshit from our new investors, we're making sure this ain't gonna happen again, and rest assured we're still here to get things done, so Radxa won't eat our breakfast anytime soon." Or so.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by RamiK on Friday November 03 2023, @08:59PM (1 child)
Upton didn't release the RP2040 as an M0+ without the willingness to commit to ARM's party line.
Either way, it's done a deal: RasPi is officially vendor-locked to ARM's ecosystem and nothing is going to get them back to making decent mid/low tier profiles at a reasonable price.
compiling...
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Rich on Friday November 03 2023, @09:36PM
I mean, it's not bad - if they can ship. The "official" Pico is sold at obscure Blue/Black-Pill prices, the chip alone can be had for a buck, the Zero has "good enough" performance for a UNIXy environment for less than an official Arduino Uno and even the Pi 5 is competitively priced compared to, say, the RK3588 boards. I think the sector coverage is decent. The "large Pi" people mostly want something that is up to modern media center jobs, or don't care in small quantities. Everything else below is covered.
They also do a good job of cultivating the ecosystem by having a really low number of different items (as opposed to STM, who have a dozen lines of STM32, with a handful of dies each, and a myriad of packages). Unless you do millions of units, the inefficiencies brought, e.g. by the single RP2040, are easily made up for by workflow streamlining and ecosystem access. And even the Pi 5 with 8 GB costs less than a work hour of a first world technician. So, pricewise, they're fine. And peoplewise, they're UK IT, and I don't like UK IT people, but these do a good job. Not the best job conceivable, but better than anyone else in the segment.
My worries are more that "investors" spot the opportunity for "profit centers", or in the case of ARM to "shape the market", and they spoil their ecosystem. But then, the Shenzhen people (Radxa) trying to up their game these days. We'll see.
(Score: 4, Funny) by namefags_are_jerks on Friday November 03 2023, @10:16PM (1 child)
How is the UK's Computer Science course enrollments going?
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 04 2023, @01:21AM
Not so great, after the rich nerds mashed together ChatGPT with Stack Overflow.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Snotnose on Friday November 03 2023, @11:15PM (2 children)
ARM just wants to ensure the Raspberry Cake doesn't have a RISC-V.
BTW, is it vee or five?
When the dust settled America realized it was saved by a porn star.
(Score: 4, Funny) by dwilson on Friday November 03 2023, @11:49PM
Yes.
- D
(Score: 3, Informative) by Kilo110 on Saturday November 04 2023, @02:00AM
that was my first thought as well.
it's "five"