High-res pics of the Raspberry Pi PCBs
raspberrypi.org
raspberrypi.org
It supposed to run Linux but without a datasheet for the CPU and its peripheral how does it do that? And what sort of support will Broadcom offer?
The FAQ says "In general, you need to look to see whether the program you want can be compiled for the ARMv6 architecture.", ARM V6 (aka ARM 11) rather than Cortex architecture seems a bit behind kinda.
And the discussions in the forums about details of the chip being redacted in comments here: http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum?mingleforumaction=viewtopic...
Then we compare the T.I. OMAP 4430 chip (used in the Chumby, Pandaboard, etc) which is the only other ARM chip that can do HD Video and it costs $15/chip in quantity.
As someone who has built this sort of thing in the past I am really wondering if they are going to pull it off or flame out. Clearly I hope they pull it off but am really wondering how.
That thread you linked to is from early on in the summer, before we had finished negotiations with our vendors and had documentation in place that allowed us to say that the SoC we are using is the BCM2835. If you search for BCM2835 on our website, you'll see that since then there's a lot of discussion about it with the name there in full.
We're all on track to have the first units out by the end of the year (which will be auctioned) and to be producing them in large numbers in January - there's not much more I can say to dampen your speculation, so I guess you'll just have to wait so you can watch us pull it off.