# Raspberry Pi: the Upcoming $25 1080p-Capable ARM-Based Hobby Computer



## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Yes, you heard that right, when completed, the Raspberry Pi foundation will be selling a credit card sized computer running Linux that can plug into your television and play H.264 1080p30 videos. Raspberry Pi is the somewhat cheekily-named UK registered charity which has been set up to design and build a very low cost computer that is targeted for use in computer science lessons in schools, to "put the fun back into learning computing." Why, was it ever not fun?! However, such a simple and cheap general purpose gadget has the potential for many other uses than the classroom, as the world is full of inventive tech-minded people that can tinker with something like this and build innovative projects with them, perhaps by using several of these together.

The product will come in two configurations, a $25 Model A with 128 MB SDRAM & $35 Model B with 256 MB SDRAM and both will come with the same 700 MHz Broadcom BCM2835 media processor featuring an ARM11 (ARM1176JZF-S) core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM. We expect that in this day and age, most people will go for the 256 MB model, which is still a very small amount of RAM. For those that want to get the most out if this device, the website - www.raspberrypi.org - has a forum and a wiki with tons of technical details on the device, including benchmarks and links to many other news stories & blogs about the product. There's even a shop, although at the moment, it's only selling keyboard stickers of the foundation's logo.



 




Note that the target price of $25/$35 is a hard limit, so the standard feature set is limited by this. One example is that it has no analog VGA output, since this would require conversion electronics that would increase the price. The wiki however, does provide links to suppliers of HDMI to VGA adapters. This computer is expected to be available in December in the UK and possibly the US. In the pictures above, the diagram on the right is the final PCB artwork and the provisional specification is shown below:


700 MHz Broadcom BCM2835 media processor featuring an ARM11 (ARM1176JZF-S) core, Broadcom GPU core, DSP core and support for Package-on-Package (PoP) RAM
128 MB (Model A) or 256MB of SDRAM (Model B), stacked on top of the CPU as a PoP device
OpenGL ES 2.0
1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
Composite and HDMI video output
One USB 2.0 port provided by the BCM2835
SD/MMC/SDIO memory card slot
General-purpose I/O (About 16 3v3) and various other interfaces, brought out to 1.27 mm pin-strip
Optional integrated 2-port USB hub and 10/100 Ethernet controller (Model B)
Open software (Iceweasel, KOffice, Python)
Capability to support various expansion boards

*View at TechPowerUp Main Site*


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Thanks to Easy Rhino for the tip.


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## Damn_Smooth (Nov 25, 2011)

I have no idea what use I would have for this. It's weaker than any phone from the last 2 years. 1080p youtube videos? Meh, I'll pass.


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## TRWOV (Nov 25, 2011)

Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc  project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.


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## Damn_Smooth (Nov 25, 2011)

TRWOV said:


> Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc  project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.



Thanks, I didn't think of that. I'm still good though.


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## Lionheart (Nov 25, 2011)

Where can I plug in my GTX 580 thankyou ^_^


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## btarunr (Nov 25, 2011)

For $25 that's a great hobby kit. One can already think of so many applications even for the 128 MB model.



Lionheart said:


> Where can I plug in my GTX 580 thankyou ^_^




Stick two wires into its power connectors
Stick the other ends of those wires to the L and N of your 120V wall socket
Enjoy the stunning visuals™ (in Intel's words)


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## mediasorcerer (Nov 25, 2011)

Ah, thankyou lionheart and btarunr, funny words!

This could be good for a pushbike, with a rear facing cam and a small screen mounted on the handlebars? Doesnt seem quite powerful enough at its current spec.

Good idea though.


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## Jstn7477 (Nov 25, 2011)

FXI Cotton Candy is a LOT better, but I guess this has a little more connectivity instead.


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## Trackr (Nov 25, 2011)

What kind of OS can this thing run 1080p from?

I doubt you could run Windows 7 on 700Mhz ARM.


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## btarunr (Nov 25, 2011)

Trackr said:


> What kind of OS can this thing run 1080p from?



Debian, Fedora, any modern Linux-based OS for the ARM architecture.



Trackr said:


> I doubt you could run Windows 7 on 700Mhz ARM.



You should be able to run Windows Mobile 7 "Mango". You can't run Windows 7 (the PC operating system) on any ARM platform for that matter. Not even NVIDIA Tegra penta-core chips.


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## theJesus (Nov 25, 2011)

Complain all you want the low specs, but at this price it's pretty damn cool.  Could make a very cheap alternative to an HTPC for those on a tight budget.


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## Zubasa (Nov 25, 2011)

Exactly, people complaining about the specs need to realize they can't even get a decent router for $25.


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## Peter1986C (Nov 25, 2011)

Trackr said:


> What kind of OS can this thing run 1080p from?
> 
> I doubt you could run Windows 7 on 700Mhz ARM.



Windows is compiled for the X86 architecture, so even if the embedded CPU of this device ran at a clock speed of, say 20 PHz, neither Windows nor Mac OS and not even gaming console OSes (being compiled for IBM's PowerPC arch, AFAIK) would be compatible. You are currently trying to compare peaches to cauliflowers.

And you should now (as a TPU member) that Linux and BSD, especially when properly adapted to the hardware that is used, is more leightweight than Windows.

And this is mainly meant to fiddle with and to practice programming on, as it seems.


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## Completely Bonkers (Nov 25, 2011)

Model A and Model B. Anyone else recognise that? I think you going to have to be over 35 and British to recognise Acorn BBC Micro. And their ARM evaluation system:

http://www.stumpie.com/armeval/
http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/4617/Acorn-ARM-Evaluation-System
http://www.heyrick.co.uk/assembler/proctype.html

1985 to anyone that is interested in retro/classic computing


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Model A and Model B. Anyone else recognise that? I think you going to have to be over 35 and British to recognise Acorn BBC Micro. And their ARM evaluation system:
> 
> http://www.stumpie.com/armeval/
> http://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/4617/Acorn-ARM-Evaluation-System
> ...



Yeah, I remember it and I was thinking about it when I wrote up the article.


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## Completely Bonkers (Nov 25, 2011)

Original ARM processor in Acorn Evaluation System







I remember it being "unbelievable" when it came out. The performance was not a % or double of existing systems. It was like 20-100x faster depending on what it was doing. Reason? It was 32-bit and had 25 separate registers, whereas, the CPUs of the time (excluding mainframes) were 8-bit with just 3x 8-bit registers and perhaps 1x or 2x hybrid 16bit registers.

So old 8-bit code was constantly swapping registers and PUSHing and PULLing to the stack.  So there was a lot of "overhead" to actual computation time. Any 16, 32 or float calculations required a lot of lengthy routines and scratch space using memory as virtual registers. This was slow. Multiply didnt exist in 8-bit (typically) whereas these new processes had a MUL instruction. 

Incredible breakthrough at the time.


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## Frick (Nov 25, 2011)

Ohh, possible release date! BTW, if you're interested there's an old thread about it here.

Do wantwantwant noew!

@C Bonkers: When was that released?

Oh, and here we can see it playing Quake 3!


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Completely Bonkers said:


> Original ARM processor in Acorn Evaluation System
> 
> https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...tem.jpg/800px-Acorn-ARM-Evaluation-System.jpg
> 
> ...



Nice find. Yes, the performace gain was astronomical and those original Archimedes computers, which had an ARM2 CPU, absolutely flew. It was the first taste of high performance that mere mortals had seen in a desktop computer.  Trust Acorn to f*ck up such a huge advantage. 

I think the Z80 had a multiply instruction, but it's been so long now, I'm not sure.


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## Completely Bonkers (Nov 25, 2011)

@Frick, 1986/87 I think

@qubit. No. Z80 had no Multiply.  You had to do it with a series of adds and binary rotates (multiply by 2 in binary means shift all 1 and 0 to the left).

Here is someone showing you how to do it on the Z80
http://sgate.emt.bme.hu/patai/publications/z80guide/part4.html

IIRC, the Comodore 64 used a "special" 6509 processor called the 6510 which DID have a simple 8bit hardware multiply for one of its registers. It wasnt a "true" multiply, but it helped the coding significantly, meaning long-hand multiply as shown in the link above could be simplified and be about 4-5x times quicker. DIVIDE was still a PITA.

Remember that 8 and 16 bit integer multiple is EASY PEASY compared to the code needed on 8-bit processors to do floating point! Now THOSE PROGRAMMERS I really admire.

http://6502.org/source/floats/wozfp1.txt / http://6502.org/source/floats/wozfp3.txt

Steve Wozniak (and friends). Genius.


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## HalfAHertz (Nov 25, 2011)

Yey! Finally my toaster will be able to display 1080p pr0n!


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## Disparia (Nov 25, 2011)

Can pick up a 48 10/100 + 2 Gb port switch for a little over $200.

Now to think of something to do with 48 ARMS.


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## HalfAHertz (Nov 25, 2011)

Jizzler said:


> Can pick up a 48 10/100 + 2 Gb port switch for a little over $200.
> 
> Now to think of something to do with 48 ARMS.



Ya but can you fit it into a toaster?


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

@Completely Bonkers

The C64 and the 6510, I always did wonder what that variant did.


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## Disparia (Nov 25, 2011)

HalfAHertz said:


> Ya but can you fit it into a toaster?



Yeah, MY toaster. Can do a whole loaf at a time 

Hmm... may not have a need for a toaster with an ARM cluster. But I wonder if they would make good thin clients. Plug in into a TV, connect up to other computers in the house.


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## Completely Bonkers (Nov 25, 2011)

Yes, in theory the C64 had a (slightly) better processor than the Acorn 6502.  But the coding of the Acorn OS , "BBC Basic", the floating point routines, quality of the display output, inbuilt assembler, and the hardware expandability of the BBC Micro meant it was a far superior product. The only "win" the C64 had was the "sprite generator" within the VPU (what we now call GPU).

I actually think that the BBC Basic ROM, a full Basic Interpreter and 6502 Assembler, built within 16K, was one of the best "codings" of all time. How so much was squeezed into so little space, and how routines were designed to be re-usable by other functions.  When the 65C02 came out, which added just 7 new instructions: PHX PHY PLX PLY INC A DEC A and STZ, Acorn developed Basic 4 that fitted an even better expanded BASIC, increased floating point accuracy by one digit, and even speeded up the interpreter, and all into the same 16K space.  It is one of the "Wonders of the Programming World". It's up there with DOOM, HTML, Google Earth/Maps,  etc.



TRWOV said:


> Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc  project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.


If you are happy to use ARM rather than x86 in the car, consider something like this with display included.

http://www.watterott.com/de/Boards-Kits/ARM/ARM11

Actually that whole website is fascinating... build your own robots etc. Website is a mix of english and german.

Err. Look what I just found on that website. This is what The W1zzard wears at parties! LED cufflinks! LOL http://www.watterott.com/de/iCufflinks-v10


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## horik (Nov 25, 2011)

117,17 €,cheap...


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## JrRacinFan (Nov 25, 2011)

I want a 256MB model, rather stinks there isn't a pre-order option available.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 25, 2011)

does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...


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## sneekypeet (Nov 25, 2011)

with its size it just needs one screw....I was thinking of something like a passport (HDD) shell.

Also in the first image in the OP, where is the SD card slot? I sort of got the feeling that they would have an SD slot on the PCB.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 25, 2011)

strange. this schematic looks different.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/Raspi-Model-AB-Mono-1.png


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...


Well, as far as I can see, the only standards supported is the video playback & HDMI, Ethernet and that it runs Linux.



sneekypeet said:


> with its size it just needs one screw....I was thinking of something like a passport (HDD) shell.
> 
> *Also in the first image in the OP, where is the SD card slot? I sort of got the feeling that they would have an SD slot on the PCB.*



It's a picture of the prototype, so that could be why.


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## sneekypeet (Nov 25, 2011)

I was just wondering if it was on the back, maybe blocking installation, only reason it really peaked my interest in its location. I sort of figured it was a pre-release in the image I asked about.


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Yes, it could well be on the back. One could trawl through some of the many links in the wiki perhaps, where photos of the back might exist.

Ya know, this thing is so cheap, with the $35 one costing around £20 in UK money, that getting one is almost a no-brainer. I'm certainly gonna be keeping my eye on this. This was a really great find by Easy.


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## HalfAHertz (Nov 25, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> does the board conform to any industry standard? i would obviously like to put this into a case...



I don't think so but I read in one of the interviews that it's exactly the same size as a credit card.


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## Kreij (Nov 25, 2011)

With a little ingenuity you could rig this thing up to sit in your pocket and supply a heads-up display on your glasses so you could surf TPU at work without your boss knowing.

Not that I condone something like that. (snort)


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## qubit (Nov 25, 2011)

Kreij said:


> With a little ingenuity you could rig this thing up to sit in your pocket and supply a heads-up display on your glasses so you could surf TPU at work without your boss knowing.
> 
> Not that I condone something like that. (snort)



This would actually be handy for me, as I'm always watching over my shoulder to make sure the boss doesn't catch me...


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## Wile E (Nov 25, 2011)

TRWOV said:


> Cool, nice and cheap. I might go ahead with my car pc  project after all. I had considered a Via Nano board but prices are through the roof.



Exactly what I thought of immediately. If you could get an android build on it, it would be great.


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## 1freedude (Nov 25, 2011)

I saw this Wednesday morning.  I didn't think enough of it to share.  I'm in the FXI camp.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 26, 2011)

Hmmm...  I hope they port DD-WRT to it!


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## RejZoR (Nov 26, 2011)

Hm, no memory card or other storage medium? Where do you install OS ? Or does it come with onboard chip with Android on it or something?


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## newtekie1 (Nov 26, 2011)

RejZoR said:


> Hm, no memory card or other storage medium? Where do you install OS ? Or does it come with onboard chip with Android on it or something?



There is an SD card slot.  What is shown in the picture in this news article is actually an Alpha board, it does have an SD card slot on it as well, but it is on the bottom under the USB ports, so it is impossible to see in the picture, but it is there.  The final design has an SD card slot as well.


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## NC37 (Nov 26, 2011)

Frick said:


> Ohh, possible release date! BTW, if you're interested there's an old thread about it here.
> 
> Do wantwantwant noew!
> 
> ...



From the look at that FPS counter, it runs it about as good as PCs did back then. Still, not bad. I'd like to see a UT99 timedemo. Bit more CPU bound.


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## Fx (Nov 26, 2011)

theJesus said:


> Complain all you want the low specs, but at this price it's pretty damn cool.  Could make a very cheap alternative to an HTPC for those on a tight budget.



bingo


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## Peter1986C (Nov 27, 2011)

For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:


qubit said:


> And now for that video. The short video below, originally found in an interesting geek.com article, compares a 1.6 GHz dual core Atom CPU in a netbook against a development board using a Cortex-A9 ARM CPU, configured as a dual core system, running at a mere 500 MHz. Yes, just 500 MHz. The results? Even with the netbook having a graphics accelerator and the ARM dev system not having one, the ARM was only slightly slower than the Atom! Of course, it consumed a lot less power than the Atom CPU too, which is critical. Note that this video dates from Jan 2010 and there's newer versions of both products now. However, it's still valid today, as the performance balance hasn't changed much between the two processor architectures. This is because the differences are inherent to them (x86 is hot and inefficient, basically) so it doesn’t really matter how much each one is tweaked, the performance ratios will stay roughly the same.


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## Disparia (Nov 27, 2011)

Thanks for confirmation.


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## Wile E (Nov 27, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:



It is crap. But it's good enough for what I would use it for, which is essentially a music player.


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## newtekie1 (Nov 27, 2011)

Chevalr1c said:


> For those who think that the performance of that ARM chip is crap:



So showing that it is noticeably slower than a POS Atom at even the basic task of loading webpages, is proof that ARM isn't crap?  No, ARM is crap for anything a real computer would be used for, but for applications where utterly shit performance doesn't matter, it works.

It is kind of like saying riding your bike to work gets you there so it isn't a crap method of travel.  And the proof is in the fact that riding your bike is slower than riding a MoPed to work, but not _that_ much slower...


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 27, 2011)

power : performance the ARM wins hands down. power : performance is where corporations are moving as the cost of energy skyrockets. we have hit a point where you dont need much computing power to run a browser and email. all of that processing can be done in the cloud. there is a sea change ahead and if you don't get on board you will drown.


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## Wile E (Nov 27, 2011)

Easy Rhino said:


> power : performance the ARM wins hands down. power : performance is where corporations are moving as the cost of energy skyrockets. we have hit a point where you dont need much computing power to run a browser and email. all of that processing can be done in the cloud. there is a sea change ahead and if you don't get on board you will drown.


My job uses Atoms and cloud.

It sucks total shit. Horribly slow and actually hurts production. ARM would only exasperate the issue.

It may be the future, but that future isn't viable for a long time to come.


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## Easy Rhino (Nov 27, 2011)

Wile E said:


> My job uses Atoms and cloud.
> 
> It sucks total shit. Horribly slow and actually hurts production. ARM would only exasperate the issue.
> 
> It may be the future, but that future isn't viable for a long time to come.



yea i didnt say it was great right now  but it is coming. i use it at work and it is very fast since we RDP into a VM on a fiber backbone. companies like intel and amd won't survive forever on bulk desktop sales. arm has the right approach and is ahead in that regard but no doubt intel has an arsenal of awesome just waiting to be unleashed. amd is like the retarded child who wont enter the game until it can sue intel and have some capital to start research


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## Disparia (Dec 3, 2011)

December 1st, We have PCBs!



> We’ve made 100 of these betas, which will now be populated with components (I don’t have an ETA from Pete on the completed boards, but I promise you I’m as keen to find out as you are). Raspberry Pis from this very first, small batch, will be going on sale when they’ve been tested, most likely via an auction so that we can raise some money from those collectors who are very keen to get their hands on devices with a very low serial number. I can’t make any promises here, as it all depends on how they perform in testing, but we anticipate that happening before the end of the year. As soon as they’re finished, we’ll be starting production in earnest.



Two more pics at the source.


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## qubit (Dec 3, 2011)

I wuz gunna go cardin' but the number's blanked out and the card expired in September.


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