Four years after the release of Raspberry Pi 4, the Raspberry Pi team has launched a small but powerful new computer - the Raspberry Pi 5. It's a worthy successor, with newer components, better specs, and even some custom chips.
You may not be familiar with the original concept behind the Raspberry Pi. Since 2012, the Raspberry Pi Foundation and its commercial arm have been designing and selling affordable single-board computers about the size of a deck of playing cards.
It is based on the Arm system on a chip and has all the functions of a full-size computer, such as USB ports, HDMI output, Ethernet port for networking, etc. Over time, new features have been added to the Raspberry Pi, such as support for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
Tech enthusiasts immediately started playing around with these tiny computers to create media servers, retro gaming consoles, interactive dashboards, robotics projects, and more. The RaspberryPi is a great way to get started with coding and networking.
Soon after this initial craze, some companies even started using the Raspberry Pi as an industrial controller or office thin client. There have even been shortages of the Raspberry Pi due to supply chain issues, scalpers and over-success.
Let’s take a deeper look at the specs of this new device. RaspberryPi5 is equipped with a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor clocked at 2.4GHz (512KB L2 cache per core, 2MB shared L3 cache).
Like the Raspberry Pi 4, it supports Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac), Bluetooth 5.0, Bluetooth Low Energy, and Gigabit Ethernet. It has two micro-HDMI ports, which means you can use one Raspberry Pi to connect two 4K displays with a 60Hz refresh rate and HDR support.
Speaking of USB ports, the Raspberry Pi5 reappears with two full-size USB 3.0 ports (supporting 5Gbps simultaneous transfer speeds) and two full-size USB 2.0 ports. Fortunately, it has a USB-C port that can also be used as a power port.
Adding PCI Express peripherals will become even easier now that the Raspberry Pi team has unveiled the new single-lane PCIe 2.0 interface for the first time. However, to take advantage of this interface, you must obtain a HAT extension (hardware attachment over the top) or adapter. Likewise, Power over Ethernet can be supported via a separate HAT.
Additionally, the usual 40-pin header and MIPI camera/display port (upgraded from 2×2 lanes to 2×4 lanes) are available. The performance of the microSD card slot has also been doubled.
In terms of pricing, there are only two versions of Raspberry Pi5, one is a 4GB memory version priced at $60; the other is an 8GB version priced at $80.
The entry price for the Raspberry Pi 5 is much more expensive, but the Raspberry Pi 4 is currently available with 1GB, 2GB, 4GB or 8GB of memory, and it's not going away. If you compare two models with the same memory capacity, the Raspberry Pi costs $5 more.
Although the main system on the chip is still designed by Broadcom, the RaspberryPi5 is the first full-size RaspberryPi to use the custom chip RP1.
This is a southbridge chip, meaning it handles I/O functions and replaces some functions previously handled by the main system on the chip. Previous RaspberryPi models relied on I/O controllers from third-party companies.
In more technical terms, "it occupies the 'I/O controller' socket, which in previous generations was occupied by parts from Microchip (LAN9512, LAN9514, LAN7515) or ViaLabs (VL805)." Strictly speaking, it also replaces most of the main SoC's analog components: GPIO and associated low-speed peripherals, Ethernet MAC, MIPICSI/DSI, analog TV. "This way, HDMI, SDRAM and PCI Express (used to communicate with the RP1 and external devices) stay on the main SoC," Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said in an email.
This isn't the first custom chip for the Raspberry Pi, as the team has designed its own microcontroller chip for the Raspberry Pi Pico, a versatile microcontroller board used in IoT devices, lighting displays, manufacturing processes, and more.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is another sign that the Raspberry Pi seems to be a team looking to control more components. In terms of unit economics, it has reached a scale that makes this type of project sustainable.
In 2021, Raspberry Pi's trading arm raised $45 million to invest in the supply chain and develop new products. But because of its unique positioning, the Raspberry Pi has been in high demand for years.
For example, the Raspberry Pi5 will be in production until 2035. The value proposition of the Raspberry Pi has always been that you can buy 100,000 units tomorrow. With the launch of Raspberry Pi 5, the company has added another device to its existing product line. The Raspberry Pi 4 is not going away and will continue to be produced for some time. RaspberryPi5 will be available before the end of October.
Upton told me: "Production ramps are always challenging, but we have ordered millions of chipsets and expect to be able to produce 1 million Raspberry Pi 5 units by Christmas while maintaining existing production levels for Raspberry Pi 4 and earlier products."
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