SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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.
(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.