Sony backs Raspberry Pi with fresh funding, access to A.I. chips
cnbc.com
cnbc.com
During the chip shortage Eben Upton made the decision to focus all their manufacturing output on their business and industrial customers.
Upton justification was that those companies income depended on Raspberry Pi so that’s where they prioritized their supply.
Realistically those companies could have found other technology solutions, designed their systems around other tech. Upton could have given them notice to find other designs so Raspberry Pi could get back to kids and schools.
But that never happened.
So the realistic outcome is that for years now raspberry pi has been a dedicated supplier of industrial computing systems. Schools, kids and hobbyists are long forgotten.
Nothing has changed and raspberry pi continues to pretend it’s about school, kids and hobbyists but it’s just and industrial computer systems company.
Raspberry pi is a strange sort of ghost company. It exists, but you haven’t been able to buy their core products for many years now. The maintain a sort of phony facade continuing to market to community and schools and kids which is very strange since the community response is always “great but we can’t buy your stuff”.
Raspberry pi are really only interesting if you want to stick to the small form factor and the usually come without screens and keyboards.
EDIT: raised price from 50 to 100€ as a quick search only showed netbooks and laptop with 1 or 2GB of ram for 50€ in a 10km radius. In 2 minutes I found a Thinkpad T420 with crappy screen resolution 1366x768.
Goes doubly so for the Pi specifically, since they stayed on 32 bit armhf OSes for the longest time which have even less package support and just straight up cannot run a wide range of software. And the new arm64 builds are laughably bad, having an almost 10-50% performance overhead on certain processes. And the Pi 4 is already painfully slow even compared to cheap android phones.
It is in most aspects an absolutely terrible way to get started with computers.
Originally Pi was created to promote CS learning and I get that it has some shortcomings there but it sure as hell has enabled a lot of people to learn about embedded computing and robotics.
I think the raspberry pi is mainly interesting for its small size, GPIO pins and very low idle power.
It's an ecosystem that can use several families of chips, from 8 bit AVRs to 32 bit ARMs. The Arduino code you find online will most likely work on either one, as the most used low level functionality (timers, GPIO, etc.) are abstracted by a high level API that will work on any microcontroller supported by the Arduino IDE.
The RaspbeeryPi ecosystem is too tightly coupled to that very specific Broadcom chip family, which gives them and the RaspberryPI foundation, a powerful monopoly.
But there is now the RP2040, a processor from Raspberry Pi that works well in most Arduino-like applications. It has a lot of very powerful features! And what’s interesting is that last time I checked this, it was the most in stock processor at Digikey (to pick one vendor as an example). The stock numbers for the RP2040 are very high, and I suspect it will never experience a shortage.
The RP2040 and its dev board the Raspberry Pi Pico don’t depend on Broadcom and they’re wonderful chips. If you do a lot of Arduino I highly recommend checking it out!
Then you're much better off getting one of the endlessly available low-power X86 small form factor platforms either new or off the second hand market, available with Intel or AMD chips.
And unlike the Broadcom based R-PI, you'll have a much better time as you won't get locked into any specific chip vendor so you can easily migrate to whatever chip offers you the best price or performance or energy efficiency at the time of purchase.
The standardization of the X86 platforms is unbeatable by the current crop of ARM SBCs with their proprietary firmware blobs and weird boot methods.
Locking yourself into a very specific chip platform of a single manufacturer, just for running linux and a web server, is a huge mistake and we're now seeing the consequences of not having a competitor/dual source.
but.
As soon as you start worrying about power, or GPIO, then it starts to get a bit messy.
There is still a sweetspot for the rpi. but as soon as you start wanting to do pure software, then you might want to think again. Its very much a spectrum.
7nm-10nm X86 CPUs from Intel and AMD are nearly as efficient as a R-PI, IPC for IPC, and GPIOs can be extended on them via USB in a standardized manner if desired.
Most people buy R-Pis to run linux, python, a web server or turn on some LEDs. Linux, python and web servers can be run on low power X86 machines, and LEDs can be turned on by an Arduino or R-PI 2040 microcontroller.
People stuck to using R-Pis out of comfort and inertia because it was the only thing they heard about and it was the best thing at the time when X86 was not competing in the space, but today it's no longer the only option or the best option. People need to start exploring the other options.
I've been looking to replace my current intel 10watt server with a AMD ~10 watt device for a >3x performance boost, but they are all going to cost >$250.
Again, I am designing a farming robot. We absolutely do not want to use USB for anything critical (which is pretty much everything). On our raspberry pi motherboard I’m using SPI to talk to CAN bus chips to do motor control. I’ve had so many weird control USB issues in my life I would absolutely not want to use USB for motor control!
For a webserver an small x86 system is a good choice but it doesn't work as the brains of an IoT device or 3D printer.
I’m prepared to be corrected, though. Maybe I’ve just used really dumb printers and I’m not familiar with the world of pi-based 3d printers.
Fast answer: yes, you can use a Pi, most often running OctoPi, but only a Pi3 at least is fast enough - with a 2 or some Zero models, it will be unable to keep up with faster prints and possibly wreck em.
There's a newer, better firmware which I'm about to install on my printer called Klipper, which replaces the more typical Marlin that you find on most entry-level printers, and it depends on a Pi running alongside the printer's microcontroller. For that, it apparently is a huge boost in both speed and quality, so I'm checking it out.
It’s so cool that tiny little microcontrollers can handle prints without much trouble (though you can get stuttering if they can’t hold enough instructions at once), but while a Pi, despite being far more powerful, can become unreliable and ruin prints. Given that’s likely because it’s talking over a network, handling a camera feed, running an operating system, etc. I just find it so cool how useful and capable microcontrollers can be in the right settings.
Even though I claim pi is the de facto standard for getting started, a microcontroller controlling the stepper motors is a technically improved solution.
You will probably be interested to check out the beaglebone series of boards. They are less of a de facto standard but they are popular enough. Their CPUs have two 200Mhz 32bit microcontroller cores running in realtime. They can directly share the same memory as the ARM cores so you can have the best of both worlds on one computer.
Do you know of any obvious drawbacks with beagles? I can imagine the community is smaller, so there would be fewer peripherals and libraries to choose from. Generally speaking I don't really need that, though. Sometimes off-the-shelf solutions are even unappealing because I enjoy learning, or I don't want to hit edge-cases where it doesn't quite fit my use case.
> Locking yourself into a very specific chip platform of a single manufacturer, just for running linux and a web server
Ah, yeah, I am very much not doing this and I’m surprised you didn’t start your comment with this stipulation. I use raspberry pi for robotics where the standardized documentation and abundant I/O are extremely helpful.
The ESP32 is really a major upgrade in almost all areas. SPIFFs webpages as control apps via a wifi hotspot are just so damn convenient.
[0] https://microbit.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MicroPython
I'm still not sure why the BBC went down the route of making its own platform when adapting the arduino world would have been simpler and more effective. Still its good to see that the BBC is doing computing again.
Falls into an awkward position where the people who could utilise it can do much more for much cheaper with an esp8266
Some pretty neat UI design limitation challenges involved too with the 5x5 display. e.g. I made a pomodoro timer with it; iirc I used used left-to-right top-to-bottom for normal time, reversed for breaks, a number for how far into the cycle it was and flashing figures for when setting inputs and it beeped when a break started/ended with a longer beep for the big break
When I backed the Turing Pi 2 project, I hoped that I'd be able to source some CM4s by the time they were done with the project. Well, the boards arrived last week and I still haven't been able to get my hands on some CM4s, so those boards are just sitting on my shelf waiting.
There is nothing realistic about this statement. What useful notice period and what alternate designs (that were magically not impacted) would those companies have been able to use? We had, and are still suffering from, a GLOBAL semiconductor shortage. The GLOBAL supply chain fell over.
I would expect the charity arm continues it's work with kids and schools. The focus of this article is Raspberry Pi Ltd, a for-profit computer company.
It is sad they split the company up and the roots are gone but it makes sense if they are to grow and continue producing their own chips/boards/peripherals, hopefully without Broadcom.
> you haven’t been able to buy their core products for many years now.
Things are getting better. I bought a Pi 4 at the end of Jan. https://rpilocator.com/
> Manufacturers and brokers are, of course, able to charge a premium, and companies have little choice but to pay.
But the article is irrelevant anyway. It's talking about peripheral 50-cent chips, not the Raspberry Pi processor which is likely the heart of your device.
> So the realistic outcome is that for years now raspberry pi has been a dedicated supplier of industrial computing systems. Schools, kids and hobbyists are long forgotten.
The rp2040 is cheaper and probably better for teaching embedded electronics. (and super easy to get access too). It's documentation shits all over the ESP* tool chain, and its a nice, smooth coherently documented ecosystem.
I understand that you want the pi-4, as do I. But. The money from pi sales goes to education, you can see it in the company accounts. The documentation, and family of hardware is unparalleled anywhere (outside maybe adafruit)
The world is complex, and sometimes doesn't do what you want. Don't shit on something because you're upset that they aren't doing exactly what you want.
I think the Pi Zero is no longer being produced, there's onl the Pi Zero W and the Pi Zero 2 W these days.
Neither costs 5€ at places where it is in stock. The cheapest in stock device is 18.57€.
A rp2040 is a completely different animal.
The model 3 A+ has been in stock regularly now (as predicted in Raspberry Pi's December 2022 blog post), and supposedly we'll get back to regular stock by the end of the 3rd quarter this year for Pi 4 products. Not sure about Compute Module 4... but I hope that too, because it's arguably way more useful.
The RP2040 and Pico have been widely available almost since launch, and in some ways are even more intriguing for educational purposes, especially since they cost $1 and $5, respectively. And the Pico W has been an excellent alternative to ESP devices for ESPHome and other automation needs. The built-in PIO has been a pretty interesting feature, enabling some use cases I didn't initially see.
In the end, I think this year's stock availability will make or break the SBC side of things for the maker / hobbyist community.
There are way faster and more feature-rich boards with chips like the RK3588 at this point, but the software support and available libraries are still leaps and bounds better on the Pi, which is why the nearly 5-year-old hardware is selling at a premium :(
So lots of industries are willing to compromise the performances (Raspi are not top-of-the-line SBC) over a very stable software
It's why I'm sticking with X86 for my Linuxy projects. Migrating your entire SW stack from one ARM SBC to another is virtually impossible, while on X86 you never even think about it.
R-Pi was leading 8 years ago when it was readily available, dirt cheap and x86 was only gas guzzlers. Now the market has shifted against it.
People should really look into recent developments instead of defaulting to R-Pi out of habit.
I can buy a Intel N5095 based NUC for 170 Euros on Amazon with 8GB of RAM and 256GB SSD[1]. Sure it's more expensive than a PI, but that thing is readily available, will sip power and blow any R-Pi out of the water performance wise, plus it comes with 2 Gigabit Ethernet ports and 3 display outputs. It can be a great home server, it can be a great PC replacement, it can be anything you want. R-Pi is still far to weak in comparison.
If that's too expensive and overkill for you, and you just want some low-end ARM SBC to blink some LEDs from the internet, there's still the Beagle Bone Black with a single core Cortex A8 and 512MB of RAM, for around 60-70 Euros.
[1] https://www.amazon.de/-/en/Ethernet-Windows11-3-Screen-Displ...
They are still kicking some 2 years down the road.
https://www.amazon.com/PC-J4125-Computer-Ethernet-Business/d...
They are loud-ish, especially compared to a Pi. They are a bit faster and run windows though (which was required by the vendor that I had no say in choosing).
That said, for my personal projects, I still kinda default to the Pi model. A bit more power efficient and there are some solid home projects built around the Pi.
I now have like 3-4 of them in the house, ranging from a Dakboard above the fridge, to a couple pi-kvm's, including one with a multiport attachment, to remotely manage some of my stuff at home so I dont have to lug monitors and keyboard about as much. Heck I strongly considered a pi-kvm for work, even if just used as a remote crashcart of sorts.
Input is 12V, not an ideal votlage to provide from a small battery. Form factor is way bigger. How is the idle wattage ?
When the supply of Raspberry Pis was drying up, we started recycling returns to make them work again, but even that would not be sustainable.
There is no real alternative, nothing with a functioning Linux kernel and hardware that doesn’t die because of low/high temperatures or humidity or the like. The Raspberry Pi is engineered to a higher standard.
Only since December 2022, a next-generation Rockchip ARM board is shipping that’s based on Cortex A-76 and has 8K video out, but it is expected to get mainline Linux support only in 6.3.
Raspberry Pi works, the rest is just tinkering. Raspberry Pi supports some important niche economies, whose dependents would also break apart, if they didn’t get them. Medical sector, laboratory analysis, etc, etc.
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What I want to add is that the Raspberry Pi 400 always stayed in stock, and I’ve bought one for my child. So you’re also wrong on that aspect as well.
It's out of stock everywhere in the UK right now and it has been that way for as long as I can remember.
Out of interest, was it possible to apply for access to the OEM pi stock? I don't know how the whole thing worked but wasn't their strategy explicitly designed to help people in positions like yours?
https://www.itpro.com/hardware/370314/raspberry-pi-ceo-eben-...
edit: flippant jokes aside, they suck. They are the opposite of tough. I have a dead one, it was easy to kill, and I heard the same story from many others who got all hot and bothered by the specs.
edit: I've had Pis run for years. Years.
The reason you don't hear much about them in the consumer space is that Raspberry Pi's are far more popular there. However, for commercial/industrial uses, SoM's are used everywhere.
I imagine that from an objective standpoint, the pi is actually not any more inherently robust than a beaglebone, except for the critical mass of users doing development of its os, synergizing with the hardware devices that also appear. Beta was the "right" choice from a technical standpoint, but then I spent years not being able to watch anything that was on VHS, which was everything of course.
This can't be overstated. I've continuously run a few fanless Pi Zero W cameras w/motioneye in the Mojave desert for years now, none have failed.
Not in my part of the world. In the US, Chicago area, the Raspberry Pi is carried by Microcenter. They seem to have a steady supply of the 3 Pico variants. It ends there. I think I've seen the 400 on average one or two days/month for at least a year. 3A+ same. A bit less for the Zero/Zero W and even less for the 4B variants. I haven't seen a CM4 at Microcenter ever that I can recall. I found 3 US vendors who will take a backorder for the CM4. I've had one on backorder with all three since 3rd quarter 2022.
Just for the free PR I'm sure
Furthermore, Sony is the last company I would ever expect to share those goals. Sony has always targeted the high end of the market. They are profit driven, and have NEVER been interested in the low cost educational or hobbyist value of their investments.
Unless Raspberry Pi comes back with a roar in the next year or two, the best hardware platforms will be decommissioned x86 low-power SFF PCs, followed by cheap-ish special-purpose ARM devices if a specific application requires that. Raspberry Pi was the only well-supported, well-priced ARM machine that was truly general-purpose in my eyes.
I put one in my parents house for remote support, some small postfix and NUT/UPS shutdown goodness.
I usually just get a canakit on amazon for under 200 bucks and it comes with most of the utilities, cases etc needed to flesh it out.
Still thinking of making a Sonos style speaker system in the house with some Pi's and some JBL charge speakers or something which can always be used as a BT speaker and even setup in tandem for stereo. Those things are solid. I use them on the boat, when playing along to songs, even when setting up a projector in the yard for the kids to watch a movie in a "special" setup.
Second, kids and schools have not lacked for platform tools to learn about electronics and computing - we are drowning in computers, and any instructor that wants to teach kids about GPIO can get any of about a billion arduino clones for a couple bucks apiece.
Your comment presumes that things will stay this way for good, and that isn't the case regardless; they're very due for a Pi 5 release, and picking a new SoC with a reliable supplier is a good way to sort both issues.
Anyways, let's see what it looks like come Labor Day.
What’s alternative!? As an electrical engineer I designed a Spartan 7 FPGA based board with same form factor as compute module 4 for replacement in my system. Nowadays Spartan 7 chips are available again at Mouser and Digikey.
I ready don’t need a Raspberry Pi with A.I. chip, because I can’t buy even a regular one.
Something like Spartan usually is in a different league, being a fpga instead of plain soc
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_copy_protection_rootk...
I won't buy until it has flash memory.
Why is that such a difficult thing to have?
Smartphones cost less than 70$ and they have more than 2gb.
I'm starting to think the rpi isn't led by people who understand computers.
The Jetson Nano has replaced the Raspberry Pis on things like the Donkeycar project. I guess they don't want to become obsolete.
The current announcement however is about some AI co-processor. Mark my words, if the software side is anything implemented by Sony instead of the community it will be a shitshow.