7 ms·
I question whether it's wise to launch a new product before the supply chain issues which have plagued Raspberry Pi for years have been fully resolved. Granted
by Chatting 3y ago
I question whether it's wise to launch a new product before the supply chain issues which have plagued Raspberry Pi for years have been fully resolved.
Granted, the situation has improved slightly over the past few months. But you will still find Pi 4s out of stock more often than not.
The CEO said last year not to expect a Pi 5 in 2023, because they wanted to take the time to recover. Why the u-turn?
https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/21/23520400/raspberry-pi-5-release-date-pandemic-supply-chain-constraints-delay-eben-upton-ceo https://www.theverge.com/2022/12/21/23520400/raspberry-pi-5-...
- teamonkey 3y agoQuite possibly they weren’t expecting to be ready to launch in 2023 but the design/supply/capacity issues were resolved quicker than expected.
- lonjil 3y agoIt may be that whatever is currently bottlenecking RPi4 production isn't relevant to RPi5.
- cameron_b 3y agoThe RP1 I/O custom silicon hints that this may be the case
- a_paddy 3y agoThrough hole components resulted in previous Pi's being slightly slower to manufacture, the Pi5 only uses surface mount components which should increase Sony's build cadence.
- tpmx 3y agoThe bottleneck has been component availability ("supply chain"), not manufacturing.
- cdt5050 3y agoUpton talked about this in an interview. It's partly the interplay of manufacturing at this point, too. When they have parts, they'd like to catch up with the backlog faster. Because the 5 doesn't rely on the robots that place through-hole components, its production can to a degree "overlap" with the Pi 4, basically increasing the total number of boards created per hour. Having two SoCs that don't require the same machines also helps ease a bottleneck there.
- tpmx 3y agoThat seems like talk about the future. There can be only one bottleneck at a time.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- l1k 3y agoThe point here is likely to pull the rug out from under scalpers' feet. With the Raspberry Pi 5 out in two weeks, all the held-back inventory of older models will be dumped, prices will plummet, availability will become a non-issue. In that sense it's a wise move.
- michaeltimo 3y agoFinding older models were also almost impossible in the past two years. It's unlikely that Raspberry Pi 5 will solve the issue. But even so, it's not a wise move because what is the point of bringing a new model when they can't make it available to normal people?
- meragrin_ 3y ago> they can't make it available to normal people I guess you haven't been looking recently? I can go to a local store and pick one up. It looks easy to pick up one online too. https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/
- giancarlostoro 3y agoI think I've seen Pi Kits at my local target. The issue with those is, they're for niche things I might not care about and now I got tech waste on my hands, but also might not be the exact model I want. Note I'm not disagreeing, just saying in some cases, the ones in-store are kits.
- mlyle 3y agoI wouldn't expect Target to carry bare Raspberry Pi-- how many people walk into a Target wanting a Pi with no accessories?
- eldaisfish 3y agoI have and it is still a pain. Many websites still have limits on how many you can buy. The situation has improved but it is far from what your comment implies.
- numpad0 3y agoI think it's completely acceptable so long that a legacy compatible "Pi SE" options would be available, in Pi 3 and Pi 4 form factors. Raspberry Pi are used installed as components into third party engineered products, and Raspberry Pi brand holds no value to potential industrial customers if new products did not technologically exchange with existing such products. That is to say the exact mounting details, electrical compatibility, software compatibility, DO provide the value the "Raspberry Pi" brand offers if its competitors offered it. What I'm saying is, if Espressif brought that new ESP-branded 32bit thing in the Pi 3 mounting dimensions and onboard eMMC and 1/5th performance at $35+9%, that kind of thing could outsell Pi 5 at this rate, and I wouldn't mind watching that happening.
- fanf2 3y agoCheck out the “obsolescence statement” on the Raspberry Pi product pages. The 3B+ will remain in production until at least 2028 https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-plus/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-3-model-b-... and the 4 until at least 2031 https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/specifications/ https://www.raspberrypi.com/products/raspberry-pi-4-model-b/...
- fnordpiglet 3y agoRemain in production could mean like the nano 2 W which is manufactured in such small numbers it’s never in stock.
- fanf2 3y agoIt’s available to buy from several places https://rpilocator.com/ https://rpilocator.com/
- fnordpiglet 3y agoNot in the US it’s not. https://rpilocator.com/?country=US&cat=PIZERO2 https://rpilocator.com/?country=US&cat=PIZERO2 (Btw I misspoke and said nano when I meant zero)
- rasz 3y agoCEOs lie, thats in their job description. My little pi CEO anecdote: Eben Upton visited local hackerspace many years ago, someone asked about Pi2 (or maybe 3) potential release date and should he wait or buy now, Eben answered they arent even planning next version. A week later Pi2 was announced.
- cogman10 3y agoMeh, that's pretty standard practice due to the Osborn effect. [1] At the Pi1 phase, Rpi was a pretty small company. It wouldn't have been great for them if rumor got spread far and wide that Pi2 was on it's way in a week or two. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect
- esrauch 3y agoI think the criticism of saying "we're not even thinking of a replacement" is fair, the standard dodge "we don't have anything to announce at this time" which is enough to avoid the Osborne Effect.
- hajile 3y agoI'm much more surprised that they decided to launch with a GPU that would have been considered awful if it had been released with previous pi four years ago.
- tomcam 3y agoWould you consider it better than no GPU at all?
- hajile 3y agoThe recent crop of unrefined, made-for-experimenters RISC-V chips that have GPUs that are a LOT faster. Add an extra $0.50 to the chip cost and use an out-of-the-box Mali GPU that's several times faster and has better driver support courtesy of ARM (who now support the open source drivers).
- Dylan16807 3y ago"Don't expect it" to "launching Q4 for individual buyers" isn't really a u-turn.
- burnte 3y agoOr it's a great way to counter the shortage by instead offering a new product that uses parts more easily available. We'll see.