7 ms·

News about Raspberry Pi 6 and Microcontroller Development

237 points by rbanffy 6mo ago

ThrowawayR2 6mo ago
> "...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features." Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price and performance. Give us a Raspberry Pi Zero 3W with proper sleep states to reduce sleep power consumption, lower idle power while awake, and 1 GB of RAM even if it doubles the price.
- Neywiny 6mo ago
  ^^^ when I tell people tangential to the field that the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions and a beefy power supply (no more just any old micro usb cable into any old usb port), they're astonished. It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python with a friendly Linux environment and is now an expensive, power hungry, hot computer with a microcontroller hanging off of it
  - tetris11 5mo ago
    Performance per Watt still outranks any other (quasi-)mainline linux device
    - ch_123 5mo ago
      Do you have a reference for this? Looking around, I see it being beaten by other ARM SBCs, and even low end Intel devices. Many years ago, I measured performance per watt of the original Raspberry Pi when they were still relatively new. The performance per watt lagged behind even a beefy Intel box since the original Raspi was so slow that it destroyed any gain it got from using so little power. EDIT: One set of benchmarks I found as an example: https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Performance-Per-Watt https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Performance-Per-Watt
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        They've never been particularly low-power, in a performance-per-Watt sort of way compared to other offerings at whatever present day. In recent times, I've seen completely-believable reports that N150 boxes walk all over it. They've never been particularly cheap, in a performance-per-dollar sort of way. Used machines from eBay, yard sales, and old broken laptops (that still compute!) have always been better. (They usually come out OK when new is compared to new, though, which is IMHO the only valid comparison.) Those comparisons were never very favorable. --- The parts where it shines are: Small; they come in two sizes, and those sizes are small and smaller. That was new, but it's been cloned all over the place. Built-in GPIO that's meant for people to actually-use and tinker with. That was new, too, but it's also been cloned. (Also: These days, anyone can plug a cheap Pi Pico into any PC with USB and get a fairly intense amount of GPIO to goof with.) Standardization, and the appliance-like behavior this can enable. Lots of folks, including kids of all ages, just download pre-built images and swap SD cards like they would cartridges in a Nintendo. That's not for me, but it's pretty neat. Community. They've still got a lot of momentum by being first at these roles. That's good. It helps newbs (who at this point may have never had anything resembling a "real computer" to play with ever before in their lives) to get started. Low-power enough: It's not ideal when chasing tiny Watts for battery or small solar power, but you probably won't notice it on an electric bill (and despite the bizarro-world cooling rigs people put together, a passive heatsink really is good enough to keep it running in-spec).
      - sitzkrieg 5mo ago
        raspberry pi has terrible power management as well. turning off a core was impossible on previous generations for example. a few years ago rpi was the worst of all sbcs we measured for battery powered usages. this was for an actual embedded product so it wasn’t going to be used either way (ask broadcom for some chips HAHA) but there is very little reason to use a rpi over other sbcs if you have a remote idea what you’re doing beyond hobby use
    - dangus 5mo ago
      Performance per watt is nice but I’d be more inclined to talk about “problems being solved per dollar.” If you don’t specifically have a project where you need the GPIO pins built in, I struggle to understand the use case proposition of a raspberry pi compared to a typical x86 mini PC or even just grabbing a think client desktop like a ThinkCentre. Almost everything that is unique to a Pi compared to an x86 mini PC seems like it makes more sense with an ESP device. When the Raspberry Pi was $35 and it ran a desktop OS and the cheapest alternative that did that was 5x the price that use case made sense.
      - ssl-3 5mo ago
        Can show us where to find a new ThinkCentre for the price of a new Raspberry Pi 5 kit? The ones I find on Lenovo's website don't seem to get any cheaper than $649.
        dangus 5mo ago
        I’m talking about used on eBay, obviously. Or do a search for “mini PC” on aliexpress.
        ssl-3 5mo ago
        Comparing the price of used bananas to new raspberries is obviously disingenuous.
  - scottlamb 5mo ago
    On the other hand, the RP2350 actually is a microcontroller, and IMO a nice one for many purposes. PIO, high-quality datasheet, nice ecosystem, etc. And the Pi Zero 2(W) can do most things the Pi/Pi 2 could, with a smaller footprint and less power consumption. Variety is nice.
    - ch_123 5mo ago
      And to the GP's point - the Pi Pico can be programmed in Micro Python.
    - bmitc 5mo ago
      The Pico is amazing and is by far the best thing they've ever done.
  - giobox 5mo ago
    > It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python with a friendly Linux environment and is now an expensive, power hungry, hot computer with a microcontroller hanging off of it The Pi project was never originally a microcontroller - it was always a full-blown SBC you could program any way you want with some GPIO pins attached. People literally used them as (slow) home computers. The company didn't sell its first microcontroller until years later in 2021 with the Pico, by which point we already had Pi 4. I do though think its a real shame prices for the SBCs have risen as they have.
    - wrxd 5mo ago
      It's still true that people, out of convenience and familiarity, used Raspberry Pi for tasks where a microcontrollers would have been perfectly adequate
      - giobox 5mo ago
        There was definitely usecase overlap due to the presence of the GPIO, but huge numbers of Pis ended up doing things a microcontroller can't - stuff like the PiHole and Retropie projects, and never used their GPIO pins at all. Thinking of any of the early Pis as microcontrollers ignores a huge amount of the ways in which actual end users interacted with the thing, and even the way it was sold and marketed. Upton was trying to replace early hacker-friendly home computers like the BBC Micro/Apple II, for a new generation.
        bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
        > but huge numbers of Pis ended up doing things a microcontroller can't Mate you know full well it was multiple things... Marketed to education as an actual computer, to the maker demographic as a microcontroller, as a way to learn coding but also robotics etc >Thinking of any of the early Pis as microcontrollers ignores blah blah blah Same applies to thinking of them as SBCs
      - myself248 5mo ago
        This just clarified something for me. I've always been annoyed when I see a Pi with nothing connected to its GPIO header; why not just use a cheap thin client? Or an old laptop, for that matter? But that's missing the point. Here's the point: Pre-Beagleboard-and-Pi, if you wanted an programmable thing to work with GPIO, you used an Arduino or a BASIC Stamp, or just a plain old PIC. But they wouldn't run a real OS. Pre-Beagleboard-and-Pi, if you wanted an embedded Linux box, you used a WRT54G or a Soekris or an old laptop. But getting GPIO out of them was a PITA. (And often involved lashing an Arduino to the side.) The Beagleboard (released in 2008), could finally do both. It had gobs of I/O and first-class support for it under Linux. It was pretty affordable. Then the Raspberry Pi came out in 2012, with a similar amount of GPIO, but demolished the price point to where it made sense to use it in place of a microcontroller. That's really the magic of the Pi. You can keep one cheap gizmo around, and use it to solve (a large fraction of) two classes of problems. It doesn't fully replace everything a PIC or a PC can do, but it replaces an awful, awful lot of them.
  - Aurornis 5mo ago
    I agree that Raspberry Pi is not a good general purpose computer, but some of these criticisms are starting to feel like a pile-on with partially incorrect information. > the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. If you're trying to get maximum performance out of it all the time, you will want a heatsink and fan. If you want to run some Python scripts in a Linux environment or even if you're doing heavy work and waiting longer is not a problem, you don't need extra cooling. > and a beefy power supply (no more just any old micro usb cable into any old usb port) This hasn't been true in 10 years. Powering something off of any old USB port means it would have to fit within the 5V 500mA basic specification, which the Raspberry Pi 3 exceeded long ago. > It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python It was never a microcontroller by any definition of the word. Raspberry Pi foundation has released microcontrollers that run MicroPython in a very user-friendly format https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/micropython.html https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/m...
    - margalabargala 5mo ago
      > FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. What's the point of doing so though? If you're doing this, you're obviously using the wrong device. If all you need is to run some python scripts in a Linux environment, you should use a Pi 3 or Pi 0w2. Agree with your other points.
      - Aurornis 5mo ago
        Having the burst performance is helpful. Most light workloads are very bursty. When you type a command or click on something you want latency to be low. Having the overhead to get it done quickly at the full clockspeed is good if you are latency sensitive. Throttling has become a bad word. Some feel compelled to avoid it at all costs, doing things like buying big coolers and running synthetic benchmarks to avoid it. Unless you're doing sustained workloads where you need all of the performance, allowing a little throttling is fine.
  - teaearlgraycold 5mo ago
    Something can't be a microcontroller if it runs Linux.
    - monocasa 5mo ago
      I wouldn't quite go that far. Linux runs on nommu systems. With some psram you should be able to get a version to run on at least the rp2350 using the riscv cores with relatively minimal fuss. Is that a good idea? Well, not really.
    - daemin 5mo ago
      Bare metal or bare bootloader only right?
      - pjmlp 5mo ago
        Or stuff like FreeRTOS, NuttX, Zephyr, and co.
    - Lerc 5mo ago
      You can run Linux on this https://dmitry.gr/images/uARM_big.png https://dmitry.gr/images/uARM_big.png
  - newswasboring 5mo ago
    Personally I have never seen Raspberry Pi as anything but a small personal computer. I've maintained a home server which get upgraded as Pi's upgrade. It runs well and manages my media, files and now running hermes agent. I remember even the first time it was introduced to me was with look it runs linux and you can probably run VLC on it.
- ssl-3 5mo ago
  They'll do whatever they do. Maybe a tick-tock release cycle (one with new features and some speed, the next with the ~same features and more speed) is where they're headed, and maybe that makes sense. They wouldn't be the first. I'd love to see even-lower-RAM versions, though. Most of what I use Raspberry Pis for at home for is not RAM-hungry at all. My Pi4 network router has 2GB because that was the smallest/cheapest version at release when I got it, but the system itself consistently only uses about 64MB of RAM. It'd do perfectly well and have a ton of breathing room with just 128MB of RAM (which will never happen, but if it did happen...). I suspect the Pi4 that I use as a set-top box with Kodi would be fine with 512MB. I've used Zero Ws for all kinds of things over the years and never felt RAM-starved with their little 512MB of RAM. So I'm learning towards 512MB. But sure: 1GB options would also be fine even if it does double the price. Our comments serve to demonstrate that there's room in the marketplace for different SKUs with different memory capacities. :)
  - LtWorf 5mo ago
    > I suspect the Pi4 that I use as a set-top box with Kodi would be fine with 512MB. How do you cope with high resolution videos?
- throwaway27448 5mo ago
  I think exactly the opposite: we have no shortage of embedded crap we can buy; what is useful is dismembering intel. It would be better if the pi were risc v but this will do for now.
- wolpoli 5mo ago
  Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. Their niche is the industrial/embedded space. For that market, power consumption doesn't matter. What matters is that each model is guaranteed to be available till a specific date.
  - swiftcoder 5mo ago
    > Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. They may not have intended to be in direct competition, but in the current crisis conditions they are priced about the same as equivalent RAM/storage N150s, have even worse supply issues than the N150s, and have worse performance/watt than the N150s. Its mighty hard to recommend them for new projects at the moment (nor any of the Pi clones, which are also rocketing in cost and dwindling in availability)
    - pyreko 5mo ago
      I think they were kinda competing for some people even before then, there was a good amount of time where people looked at Pis as a decent small, cheap, and low-power computer to throw server stuff at. Back then there wasn't much competition but mini PCs have entirely trounced them for this now outside of certain niche cases.
  - michaelt 5mo ago
    Among the people making things like a DIY NAS, who want fast USB, lots of cores and RAM, small-ish, not-too-bad power consumption, running Linux; and not caring much about GPIOs or passive cooling, it’s in competition with the N150 Among people who want GPIOs and network connectivity, a low price and an open, microcontroller like experience, not caring much about USB speeds and lots of cores and running Linux and suchlike, it’s in competition with the esp8266 & esp32. And the previous generations of RPi.
    - wolpoli 5mo ago
      The Pi SBCs are squeezed in between the SFFs and the microcontrollers for many use cases. It's only a good fit if there is a need for the GPIOs/Linux/Display. For anything else, there are better products out there.
- moffkalast 5mo ago
  A Raspberry Pi with sleep and hibernation is like asking Valve to make Half Life 3. They just can't. It doesn't compute.
- wmf 5mo ago
  Ideally each RPi generation should keep the same price (or lower now that it's gotten so high) but with better performance. If they can't do that they just shouldn't create a new generation.
  - vardump 5mo ago
    Sure (inflation adjusted), but I see no harm if they also provide higher specced SBCs.
  - platevoltage 5mo ago
    I don't think the Raspberry PI foundation has the buying power to control RAM prices.
    - wmf 5mo ago
      The price was creeping up long before the DRAM shortage. They're totally doomed now.
- hedora 5mo ago
  Is there some serious astroturfing going on with the N100/N150, or am I just jaded? I have a bunch of old intel atom boards laying around. The Intel Compute Stick (TM) burnt out its flash root drive in a few months. The C2000 board I had burnt out the clock pin to drive the bios. I have a Clover Trail with a PowerVR GPU (I thought I was getting an intel GPU because it was branded Intel Graphics or similar, but nope!) that lost Windows support very quickly after launch, and has no GPU drivers for any other OS. Instead of being fooled 4 times in a row, I looked into using an N150 for a NAS, but this time I held off a bit until after launch so I could research it first. Lo-and-behold, they all have crazy PCIe / memory subsystem data corruption issues. I guess there are some chicken bits for the OS developers to set if the kernel can stay up long enough after boot without a panic. Why would anyone buy this for a NAS / embedded use case?
  - tredre3 5mo ago
    > I looked into using an N150 for a NAS [...] Lo-and-behold, they all have crazy PCIe / memory subsystem data corruption issues. Source? I've never had a single problem with PCIE on N100/N150/N200. I have had a ton of issues with drive corruption on the pi, both via USB3 and PCIE.
    - hedora 5mo ago
      https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4-Lands-PCID-INVLPG https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4-Lands-PCID-INVLPG https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48343.0 https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48343.0
      - adrian_b 5mo ago
        All CPUs from all vendors have tons of bugs like this, which are mitigated in the operating system kernels, e.g. in the Linux kernel. I am pretty certain that the Linux kernel must also contain specific code for various quirks of all Arm CPUs that have been used in the various Raspberry Pi models. Intel had indeed several bugs that were more ugly than usual in their recent CPU models, like also MONITOR not working correctly in Lunar Lake, but even so, Intel still has better documentation for their CPU bugs than most vendors of Arm-based CPUs. In any case, the bug that you linked was solved in the kernel years ago and it affects a privileged instruction that cannot be used in user programs. It does not have any direct relationship with memory and PCIe corruption. Memory corruption can occur inside the operating kernel only in certain circumstances, when the kernel changes the mapping of global memory pages and then writes the new pages, but the writes go to the old pages. However, this could happen only until 3 years ago, before the bug was known.
- canpan 5mo ago
  I wonder how they are positioned now in the market. During covid I wanted a small low power always on server. I thought about Raspi, but at the time it was expensive and I went with an intel nuc, for a similar price. Now if I wanted to do hobby electronics, I heard I should look into esp32 or stm32..
  - virgil_disgr4ce 5mo ago
    Well... "hobby electronics" is extraordinarily broad :) It depends massively on what kind of DX you want. If you want to work with a 'regular' operating system, you're looking more in the RPi direction. If you want to write straight-up C firmware, then yeah, the esp and stms are both great.
  - platevoltage 5mo ago
    The things that keeps stopping me from using one for my server is the IO. the PCIe lane on the Pi 5 was a great addition, but it isn't quite sufficient.
  - hn_throw2025 5mo ago
    I use a Pi 4B as a 24/7 home server in a country where domestic electricity is expensive (and worsening). Each Pi release is more powerful, but uses more energy. I found the Pi 4B to be the sweet spot for me, because it is the earliest model to support USB booting, gigabit Ethernet, and offer > 1GB RAM. Perhaps a used one would fit your purposes and budget? I currently use it to run PiHole, serve media via SMB, host Postgres & Redis, and run some custom written Dockerized apps. Home Assistant to possibly follow, too. The current load seems reasonable in htop, but I haven’t looked into burst scenarios.
- vachina 5mo ago
  The entire raspi foundation is a marketing department. Raspi products is making zero sense ever since the Pi 2. > encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150. It’s nerdier to say you built your homelab on a Raspi, and that’s what keeps the foundation afloat.
- thisisabore 5mo ago
  I'd be interested in seeing them partner with some of the other interesting and open-ish players, like Pine64 or Radxa, to push for a more standardised, unified SBC landscape. But that's not as good for PR as "bigger, faster, better" even if that comes with the problems you mentioned.
- perarneng 5mo ago
  > Raspberry Pi Zero 3W with proper sleep states to reduce sleep power consumption, lower idle power while awake, and 1 GB of RAM even if it doubles the price. Yes, that would be kind of a dream device, perhaps also if it could suspend the os when asleep so it doesn't have to boot every time but I guess that might the standard way of doing it.
- ChrisRR 5mo ago
  We need a 5 lite. The specs of the 5 without the massive power draw and heat generation
  - moffkalast 5mo ago
    At least now they literally cannot pull more power over USB 5V, because they maxed out the spec. It's even slightly beyond it.
  - ianburrell 5mo ago
    I want normal USB-C power. I also want USB-C video output, they might need to replace USB-A port with USB-C. What would be really nice is Zero 3 with 2 USB-C ports and video output. Then have something cheap for projects that was flexible. Finally, they should replace the header with new extension mechanism. Something that does PCIe, USB, and power. That would allow new extension boards including one that goes GPIO breakout.
- vablings 5mo ago
  A refresh for a Pi Zero with real sleep. lower power consumption and moving away from GPIO would be awesome. Stuff like a dedicated i2c connector, PoE support and display over USB-C. M5Stack and other esp32 based ecosystems rule the world for MCU so the Zero just need to be linux SOC with all the fancy bells and whistles with good driver support
peteforde 5mo ago
Pi's refusal to drop a USB-C on Pico due to cost increases is a terrible call IMO. I seriously cannot fathom being someone doing development who wouldn't pay $0.50 extra to purge the last micro USB from their desktop.
- mrlambchop 5mo ago
  A very small point, but pulling from a feather form factor BOM to compare. $0.12 for microUSB female connector (rated 1A) $0.26 for a USB-C female (rated 3A). Needs 2 x resistors (< $0.01), 20% larger board area I think the power capabilities are the biggest item. If you want to pull higher current from a laptop for development or supply from a wall, you have to switch to USB-C. I don't think either of these prices are that aggressive - pretty sure the cost comes down at volume.
  - bee_rider 5mo ago
    I wonder if it would be worthwhile for them to produce both. Well, it will be hard to compare because the design cost doesn’t show up in the BOM, haha. But it seems like it would be useful nowadays, since some laptop have mostly USB-C connectors, and USB-C to USB-C is pretty common. I’ve never seen a C to Micro. Do they even exist?
    - sagarm 5mo ago
      I've always used USB-C to USB-A dongle + USB-A to micro B.
    - peteforde 5mo ago
      I have an unfair bias because I design PCBs as a significant part of my job, and switching out to USB on this board appears to be a non-issue. I have a Pico in front of me, and there's plenty of room there for a USB-C footprint and the two 5.1k resistors. Given that, I cannot reasonably agree that the "design" stage is significant. In other words, it's a change that I would make to my own board in 2-5 minutes because the stakes are low. My ballpark guess is that such a change at RPi would have to go through a proposal stage, a PCB change review, and then there would be dozens of places to update documentation. Since backwards compatibility is non-optional, this would result in a separate SKU, which means that the whole distribution chain needs to be updated with a new product. So, I acknowledge that when you're working at their scale any change like this is the definition of non-trivial. What I don't agree with is the conclusion that it's not still clearly the right thing to do.
bradfa 5mo ago
Would love to see actual security focused hardware/software features, like full OP-TEE, fTPM (or a more ideally a real physical TPM), and similar. For example, so that the OTP isn't the only way to store a disk encryption unlock key. The existing secure boot mechanisms aren't bad, but allowing for more than one public key hash in OTP would be nice, too. These kinds of things are expected to be on modern embedded SOCs and SOMs now.
- sq_ 5mo ago
  A physical TPM with their overall high-quality software support would be awesome. I've spent far too much time messing around trying to get TPMs working over SPI or I2C to meet security requirements with 4Bs and 5s over the years.
  - hedora 5mo ago
    You do know those are trivially bypassed with a signal processor, right? If physical access is outside your threat model, that's OK, but it makes (for example) the forced Win11 upgrade for DRM^H^H^H boot integrity enforcement seem ridiculous. https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing
    - bradfa 5mo ago
      The article you link to explains how to defeat the sniffing with TPM 2.0. But also, there’s no reason a physical TPM has to be a separate IC package.
    - sq_ 5mo ago
      Yeah, fair enough. "Compliance" is probably the phrasing I should've used, rather than "security". I've been curious for a while about the overall taxonomy of security, especially for embedded platforms. It seems like the only hope is defense in depth, given the power glitching attacks and the like that you can find demonstrated. Specific to the Raspberry Pi, I believe I even saw a thread at some point where one of their firmware engineers was making the case that secure boot on the Pi 5 was equivalent to a TPM in almost any reasonable threat model, since, in either case, you were out of luck if an attacker had physical access and was willing to put in enough effort.
Zenst 5mo ago
[flagged]
porphyra 5mo ago
The 8GB Pi 5, at $170 [1], is encroaching on Jetson Orin Nano Super's $240 price point [2]. But the Jetson has a faster CPU (newer a78ae cores rather than a76) and, obviously, a whole-ass GPU. [1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/673711/raspberry-pi-5 https://www.microcenter.com/product/673711/raspberry-pi-5 [2] https://www.microcenter.com/product/691058/nvidia-jetson-orin-nano-super-developer-kit https://www.microcenter.com/product/691058/nvidia-jetson-ori...
- gh02t 5mo ago
  Nvidia's software platform for the whole Jetson series was, at least in my experience, absolutely awful on the Jetson Nano and Orin boards I worked on. Has that improved at all? I did not appreciate that the only option they provided was a full desktop version of ancient Ubuntu... and even flashing the OS image was a bizarre process. Edit: looks like they at least have a better headless option now.
  - pta2002 5mo ago
    Nowadays upstream Linux with UEFI mostly works, with their out of tree drivers. I’ve managed to make it work in NixOS with the stock kernel. Look at the open embedded L4T project, they have some recipes for building that. No need to use nvidia’s kernel anymore! Also, supposedly on the second half of 2026 they were going to be moving even more stuff out of their Jetson-specific drivers as they already do for their slightly newer chips (so you could use the standard drivers, and standard CUDA builds). Let’s see how that turns out.
    - gh02t 5mo ago
      Yeah, one of my bigger complaints especially on the Nano was the GPU only had really limited model support (iirc, mostly tflite but maybe I'm misremembering) and it sounds like the newer ones are more normal. That and what seems from the docs to be better headless support would be major improvements. Going further to mainline distro support would make them interesting to me again. I was always disappointed by the Nano as it was a pretty capable device, but it seemed like not many people picked it up as a platform for cool things which I always attributed to the software.
dirtikiti 5mo ago
I have bought an rpi at every generation. And I still have yet to find an actual use for them. Everything they do from a compute perspective is just better with a mini pc or old laptop with a mobile spec chip. Everything they do from a programmability perspective is just better with a microcontroller specific to the task. I just don't see the actual market position for these things. They were supposed to be a cheap board, but you can't actually buy them cheaply because the vendors upcharge so much.
- dont__panic 5mo ago
  [flagged]
  - dirtikiti 5mo ago
    I'm a jerk because I've bought them and tried to find a use case for them, but found they weren't as good as other solutions? You have issues.
    - dont__panic 5mo ago
      Perhaps I was a shade too facetious. But honestly, you thought the Pi 3+ was so significantly different from the 3 that you imagined it might finally make your use case worth it? I used a Pi 4 as a home server for literal years. For a lot of light work, the Pi works great, consumes very little power, and (before the 5) required no active cooling. I understand that if you're running machine learning pipelines at home, you might want a mini PC. But it feels like most developers severely overestimate how much CPU power you need to run most services.
- sq_ 5mo ago
  I think at this point the brand reputation and software quality are a big selling point. If you're trying to build a couple of units of some embedded thing where you need to toggle some GPIOs or serial devices in response to requests over the network, but don't have the expertise or resources to do it with a microcontroller, a Pi is a great option - you know you'll have software support, and you know that the vendor will be making the exact thing you bought for 5-10y. For hobbyist stuff at home, I agree, though. A mini PC is probably better for homelab stuff, and an RP2350 or ESP32 is probably better for anything embedded or battery powered that you want to do.
exe34 5mo ago
The only way I'll buy another raspberry pi is if they come with a power supply that's guaranteed to work with them. I got tired of the random reboots in the night and replaced my media center/NAS with an old Nuc.
- wao0uuno 5mo ago
  Official power supply is sold separately. Pis work fine with unofficial USB-PD power supplies but will limit maximum current for USB devices. I have two Pi 5's and one 4 and they all are perfectly stable when powered with an old Lenovo laptop charger.
  - hedora 5mo ago
    It's still a huge pain point. I keep a magic "correctly sized, but provides clean power" USB charger with my Pi in a drawer, because I know that, if I lose that charger, I'm buying a replacement. It's unclear to me why they're so borderline. Maybe USB-C would help?
    - wao0uuno 5mo ago
      I don't know much about older models but on 4 and 5 they chose to use a weird power standard to reduce cost. Just buy the official charger. They're not expensive.
atoav 5mo ago
I run the media lab at one of Europe's must prolific art universities. The variant I tend to use most is the 3B+. Reasons: - full sized HDMI connector - headphone connector - good bang for the buck If I had one wish for any new product in the Raspberry line it would be: Do the Raspberry Pi 3++ or something. Same thing. Faster, but with USB-C power connector, 4K Video resolution, 2× USB-C I/O, 2× USB-A peripherals and maybe M.2 support.
- Rochus 5mo ago
  Same here. The 2b, 3b and Zero 2 have the best cost-benefit ratio. I recently migrated the Oberon System 3 to those three boards and particulary the Zero is a great host for this bare-bone system: https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberonsystem3native/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberonsystem3native/. I hope the Raspi company postpones the end of life date of the 3b and Zero 2.
modeless 5mo ago
I recently found out about the Radxa Dragon Q6A. A Qualcomm chip with faster CPUs, a good GPU, a DSP and AI accelerator, and a hardware video encoder seems very compelling. It even supports Windows if you want that for some reason.
- Narishma 5mo ago
  And poor software support.
Onavo 5mo ago
The raspberry pi CEO said that some of the boards will be delayed because of RAM prices. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Raspberry-Pi-discusses-Zero-3-W-single-board-computer-with-un-zero-like-price-point-if-released-today.1307659.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Raspberry-Pi-discusses-Zero-3-...
- swiftcoder 5mo ago
  As someone who has just had to migrate a project off of radxa due to ongoing supply issues... good luck getting your hands on more than one or two samples of those :/
  - Onavo 5mo ago
    For your interest https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCs/comments/1tmuy3a/radxa_rock_pi_4b_units_sale/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCs/comments/1tmuy3a/radxa_rock_pi...
armx40 5mo ago
My opinion is that Raspberry Pi has to release an NPU, and start/revolutionise the open source NPU communities and tech. Raspberry Pi's has to find itself useful in vision AI applications (extremely common in industries these days). Without it I think Arduino with its new Qualcomm boards will kill it.
- deleted 5mo ago
  [deleted]
- imtringued 5mo ago
  Kinda agree. They have a big opportunity to be "the" NPU company. The vast majority of NPUs are a poorly documented mess. The only one with good documentation is the one from AMD.
binaryturtle 5mo ago
The PI5 was a real downgrade for me with its lack of proper hardware h264 decoding as in the earlier versions (playing back h264 is my primary use case.) I will buy a PI6, if that comes back, else I stay with my reliable, and passively cooled, PI3.
404mm 5mo ago
The flagship Pi boards are also hitting the thermal design ceiling of what makes sense for this size or platform. Pi 5 is IMO already on that edge because it pretty much needs active cooling and a dedicated power supply. Going past this point means it will compete with much more powerful platforms and likely loose due to it’s architectural limitations.
synack 5mo ago
They aren't actually shipping the new RP2350 silicon revision on Pico 2 boards yet. If you want the errata fixes, you've gotta source the chips and make your own boards.
synergy20 5mo ago
For me, Pi6 shall focus on NPU to run edge models instead of getting into minipc space, e.g. 10TOPS built-in, that will be slightly better than Rockchip 3588 which was produced 4 years back at 6TOPS, and way more powerful than NXP's 2TOPS. 10TOPS is the sweet spot for edge AI as far as I can tell.
- akazantsev 5mo ago
  Designing a chip for one person is doomed to fail as a business.
  - rjsw 5mo ago
    More than one person is buying Rockchip powered systems. A new high-end RPi has to at least match the hardware features of a RK3588 or RK3688.
qzgrid37 5mo ago
[dead]
glouwbug 5mo ago
Looks like the RPI5 is like $200 in Canada now. We might have lost the plot
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  Yeah, we have. We decided the world's RAM production capability would be better suited for datacenters so we can cheat on our homework.
  - glouwbug 5mo ago
    I always wanted to wrangle ~10 of these together and practice distributed computing for the price of ~$200. That was a 2014 dream. I guess instead someone else ran with all of Jensen's polygon drawers and Hynix's backlog. Que sera
    - Dylan16807 5mo ago
      Zero 2s can still hit that price, can't they? With much better CPUs than the 2014 dream. And if you're not worried about CPU you can get a pile of Pi Picos or ESP32s. Actually, considering that the original zero had a better CPU than 2014 Pis, I'm surprised you didn't get a 10 pack of those when they were extra cheap.
      - glouwbug 5mo ago
        Zero 2s look to be about ~$50 here in Canada, but thanks for looking out. I'll reconsider for the future
- bpye 5mo ago
  The Steam Deck price in Canada went up by something like 50% yesterday also - it's now over $1100 for the 512GB OLED, up from just under $700.
  - glouwbug 5mo ago
    Starting to feel like Europe over here
63 5mo ago
It seems like esp32 boards have taken over the pi's original market as developing for them has gotten easier while pis have gotten more expensive
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  These two products don't even have the same use case.
stdatomic 5mo ago
It used to be that raspberry pi was a cheap pc. Well it's not longer cheap. And at their price point, you could just get a mini PC and have better performance, or if you want to use it as a microcontroller, you can just use an arduino, esp32, or an actual microcontroller for a fraction of the price and power consumption. So, what do people actually do with these pies?
- qsera 5mo ago
  Exactly. I think they are a bit more long lasting, but that is debatable.
- jan_Sate 5mo ago
  The form factor. It's tiny compared with mini PC. Unlike other SBC, the software support's good that it just work as advertised (GPIO, graphic hardware acceleration, etc.). If you're using it for work, it also has stable supply chain / commitment that you can ensure to be able to obtain a unit in at least the next few years. But you're right. It's pretty overpriced for its performance. If I'm after the GPIO I'd just use a microcontroller. If I'm setting up a headless server I'd just use pretty much any other SBCs or mini PC. I'm personally not a big fan of Raspberry Pi. The cheap Raspberry Pi's still available as Raspberry Pi Zero tho, if that's what you're after.
- pjmlp 5mo ago
  Getting a mini PC with ARM and first class Linux support from the OEM.
- mickael-kerjean 5mo ago
  I've got one set aside to play with v4l2m2m. Once that's working, it should improve video encoding support in my OSS project (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash)
DoctorOetker 5mo ago
> When asked about the Pi Zero 2W, Eben said the substrate supply is constrained—basically, so many AI chips are being made that even older chips using older process nodes have to fight for the actual silicon wafers to use to make the chips. I keep hearing voices invalidate each other, is the bottleneck the raw silicon substrate, or fab capacity? What purity levels are required for say Pi Zero 2W? The volume of monocrystalline silicon used in solar panels is orders of magnitude greater than the volume used in IC's / RAM production. Is the actual bottleneck 11N + grade silicon wafers while 6N to 9N grade used in solar panels remains unaffected?
qq66 5mo ago
The thing I've always wanted in a Raspberry Pi is an SBC and microcontroller on one board.
alexellisuk 5mo ago
I was thinking about the RPi 6 yesterday whilst realising I couldn't set up my RPi Zero 2W anymore - the OS has become burdensome - tied strictly to an imager, that gives me an allergic reaction. Yes - they did all this for the uninitiated - but for Raspberry Pi OS Lite - bring back this experience: dd the image, write ssh into the boot drive, SSH in - change password, fully set up in almost zero fuss or effort. Then I actually couldn't set the thing up because of the mini HDMI connection - I have a mini to HDMI cable, but to use my portable screen with it I need mini HDMI to MINI HDMI. Don't get me started on micro HDMI - almost everyone of of those connectors I've bought slips off or breaks in the device. Every time I go to set up an RPi5 I end up having to order another one of those tiny connectors. Full HDMI for all new devices please. Even if the second display can't be connected. These days a 175 GBP N95 from a no-name Chinese OEM on Amazon, with 16 GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA SSD is way better value and performance - and importantly - zero fuss - standard setup.
- akazantsev 5mo ago
  > __These days__ a 175 GBP N95 from a no-name Chinese OEM on Amazon, with 16 GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA SSD is way better value and performance - and importantly - zero fuss - standard setup. "These days" seems to be over for now. The prices went up there, and now the only affordable option is an old laptop's motherboards with DDR3 sticks. But passively cooled PCs are rare, so the Raspberry Pi still makes sense. As a bonus, it is easier to power and find a small UPS that will keep it running for hours.
esskay 5mo ago
Hard to care anymore. They made it abundantly clear they dont care about their original audience of makers and education anymore now that the industrial market are so reliant on them. Not to mention the whole crapping all over their customers on social media and then accusing them of some sort of coordinated 'attack' just made it clear they're clueless about their audience. The price increases were the end of the Pi being a viable option for most application in my eyes.
revengerwizard 5mo ago
I really really wished they released a Raspberry Pi running a RISC-V 23 processor :(
opan 5mo ago
>When asked about why Picos use micro USB and not USB-C, he said it's a cost issue. USB-C connectors are more expensive than micro USB, while also taking a tiny bit more board space. That said, USB-C will probably happen someday. Glad I'm not alone in caring about this. All I want from them is a Pico with a USB-C port. When using them for keyboards and arcade controllers you either need to wire up a separate port (and USB-C is awful to solder) or use someone else's variant with one on there. I have had issues in both cases. The Open-Frame1 leverless controller needed me to either pay for assembly or fail at soldering on the extra port myself (did the former for batch 1, got cocky when ordering batch 2 and didn't pay assembly, never got any of the new boards working). Flatbox rev 5 used an RP2040-Zero from Waveshare, which initially seemed fine but later turned out to have major bouncing issues. Typing on a virtual keyboard with it was nearly impossible, all the extra inputs being detected. The amount of debounce needed to be added in GP2040-CE settings to completely solve it resulted in it being much higher latency. I heard a theory that it was due to a lack of filtering on the MCU. Meanwhile Haute42 started pumping out incredibly cheap leverless controllers in all sorts of designs within a year of me building 10 Flatboxes. They're so cheap you can't really DIY one cheaper anymore unless you need them in bulk, and they have no bouncing/input issues. They even have extension ports to help deal with console auth. Their non-3d-printed buttoncaps also don't break as much, though I did eventually have one break after living in my backpack a while. I'd like to take another crack at building a solid leverless someday. A new Pico with a USB-C port would probably be enough motivation. Also I should note that part of why USB-C is such a big deal on a game controller is because they all use it now, and I've got lots of long USB-C to A cables connected to consoles and my PC, I can easily switch controllers at the user-facing end without having to re-run a cable. I can go from my Open-Frame1 playing Rivals of Aether to my Steam Controller playing Crab Champions to my Haute42 M16 playing Melty Blood all with the same cable routed under my desk, often without leaving my chair.

237 points by rbanffy 6mo ago

> "...: It sounds like the key feature will be 'more': a faster CPU and faster IO, rather than new features." Raspberry Pi Holdings is a embedded systems manufacturer for pity's sake; we don't need more from them, we need less. [EDIT] A faster Raspberry Pi 6 is encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150 and its successors and mainstream Linux distributions and that is a battle they would lose in terms of price and performance. Give us a Raspberry Pi Zero 3W with proper sleep states to reduce sleep power consumption, lower idle power while awake, and 1 GB of RAM even if it doubles the price.

Neywiny 6mo ago
^^^ when I tell people tangential to the field that the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions and a beefy power supply (no more just any old micro usb cable into any old usb port), they're astonished. It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python with a friendly Linux environment and is now an expensive, power hungry, hot computer with a microcontroller hanging off of it
- tetris11 5mo ago
  Performance per Watt still outranks any other (quasi-)mainline linux device
  - ch_123 5mo ago
    Do you have a reference for this? Looking around, I see it being beaten by other ARM SBCs, and even low end Intel devices. Many years ago, I measured performance per watt of the original Raspberry Pi when they were still relatively new. The performance per watt lagged behind even a beefy Intel box since the original Raspi was so slow that it destroyed any gain it got from using so little power. EDIT: One set of benchmarks I found as an example: https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Performance-Per-Watt https://bret.dk/raspberry-pi-5-review/#Performance-Per-Watt
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      They've never been particularly low-power, in a performance-per-Watt sort of way compared to other offerings at whatever present day. In recent times, I've seen completely-believable reports that N150 boxes walk all over it. They've never been particularly cheap, in a performance-per-dollar sort of way. Used machines from eBay, yard sales, and old broken laptops (that still compute!) have always been better. (They usually come out OK when new is compared to new, though, which is IMHO the only valid comparison.) Those comparisons were never very favorable. --- The parts where it shines are: Small; they come in two sizes, and those sizes are small and smaller. That was new, but it's been cloned all over the place. Built-in GPIO that's meant for people to actually-use and tinker with. That was new, too, but it's also been cloned. (Also: These days, anyone can plug a cheap Pi Pico into any PC with USB and get a fairly intense amount of GPIO to goof with.) Standardization, and the appliance-like behavior this can enable. Lots of folks, including kids of all ages, just download pre-built images and swap SD cards like they would cartridges in a Nintendo. That's not for me, but it's pretty neat. Community. They've still got a lot of momentum by being first at these roles. That's good. It helps newbs (who at this point may have never had anything resembling a "real computer" to play with ever before in their lives) to get started. Low-power enough: It's not ideal when chasing tiny Watts for battery or small solar power, but you probably won't notice it on an electric bill (and despite the bizarro-world cooling rigs people put together, a passive heatsink really is good enough to keep it running in-spec).
    - sitzkrieg 5mo ago
      raspberry pi has terrible power management as well. turning off a core was impossible on previous generations for example. a few years ago rpi was the worst of all sbcs we measured for battery powered usages. this was for an actual embedded product so it wasn’t going to be used either way (ask broadcom for some chips HAHA) but there is very little reason to use a rpi over other sbcs if you have a remote idea what you’re doing beyond hobby use
  - dangus 5mo ago
    Performance per watt is nice but I’d be more inclined to talk about “problems being solved per dollar.” If you don’t specifically have a project where you need the GPIO pins built in, I struggle to understand the use case proposition of a raspberry pi compared to a typical x86 mini PC or even just grabbing a think client desktop like a ThinkCentre. Almost everything that is unique to a Pi compared to an x86 mini PC seems like it makes more sense with an ESP device. When the Raspberry Pi was $35 and it ran a desktop OS and the cheapest alternative that did that was 5x the price that use case made sense.
    - ssl-3 5mo ago
      Can show us where to find a new ThinkCentre for the price of a new Raspberry Pi 5 kit? The ones I find on Lenovo's website don't seem to get any cheaper than $649.
      - dangus 5mo ago
        I’m talking about used on eBay, obviously. Or do a search for “mini PC” on aliexpress.
        ssl-3 5mo ago
        Comparing the price of used bananas to new raspberries is obviously disingenuous.
- scottlamb 5mo ago
  On the other hand, the RP2350 actually is a microcontroller, and IMO a nice one for many purposes. PIO, high-quality datasheet, nice ecosystem, etc. And the Pi Zero 2(W) can do most things the Pi/Pi 2 could, with a smaller footprint and less power consumption. Variety is nice.
  - ch_123 5mo ago
    And to the GP's point - the Pi Pico can be programmed in Micro Python.
  - bmitc 5mo ago
    The Pico is amazing and is by far the best thing they've ever done.
- giobox 5mo ago
  > It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python with a friendly Linux environment and is now an expensive, power hungry, hot computer with a microcontroller hanging off of it The Pi project was never originally a microcontroller - it was always a full-blown SBC you could program any way you want with some GPIO pins attached. People literally used them as (slow) home computers. The company didn't sell its first microcontroller until years later in 2021 with the Pico, by which point we already had Pi 4. I do though think its a real shame prices for the SBCs have risen as they have.
  - wrxd 5mo ago
    It's still true that people, out of convenience and familiarity, used Raspberry Pi for tasks where a microcontrollers would have been perfectly adequate
    - giobox 5mo ago
      There was definitely usecase overlap due to the presence of the GPIO, but huge numbers of Pis ended up doing things a microcontroller can't - stuff like the PiHole and Retropie projects, and never used their GPIO pins at all. Thinking of any of the early Pis as microcontrollers ignores a huge amount of the ways in which actual end users interacted with the thing, and even the way it was sold and marketed. Upton was trying to replace early hacker-friendly home computers like the BBC Micro/Apple II, for a new generation.
      - bcjdjsndon 5mo ago
        > but huge numbers of Pis ended up doing things a microcontroller can't Mate you know full well it was multiple things... Marketed to education as an actual computer, to the maker demographic as a microcontroller, as a way to learn coding but also robotics etc >Thinking of any of the early Pis as microcontrollers ignores blah blah blah Same applies to thinking of them as SBCs
    - myself248 5mo ago
      This just clarified something for me. I've always been annoyed when I see a Pi with nothing connected to its GPIO header; why not just use a cheap thin client? Or an old laptop, for that matter? But that's missing the point. Here's the point: Pre-Beagleboard-and-Pi, if you wanted an programmable thing to work with GPIO, you used an Arduino or a BASIC Stamp, or just a plain old PIC. But they wouldn't run a real OS. Pre-Beagleboard-and-Pi, if you wanted an embedded Linux box, you used a WRT54G or a Soekris or an old laptop. But getting GPIO out of them was a PITA. (And often involved lashing an Arduino to the side.) The Beagleboard (released in 2008), could finally do both. It had gobs of I/O and first-class support for it under Linux. It was pretty affordable. Then the Raspberry Pi came out in 2012, with a similar amount of GPIO, but demolished the price point to where it made sense to use it in place of a microcontroller. That's really the magic of the Pi. You can keep one cheap gizmo around, and use it to solve (a large fraction of) two classes of problems. It doesn't fully replace everything a PIC or a PC can do, but it replaces an awful, awful lot of them.
- Aurornis 5mo ago
  I agree that Raspberry Pi is not a good general purpose computer, but some of these criticisms are starting to feel like a pile-on with partially incorrect information. > the latest pi needs considerations of cooling solutions FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. If you're trying to get maximum performance out of it all the time, you will want a heatsink and fan. If you want to run some Python scripts in a Linux environment or even if you're doing heavy work and waiting longer is not a problem, you don't need extra cooling. > and a beefy power supply (no more just any old micro usb cable into any old usb port) This hasn't been true in 10 years. Powering something off of any old USB port means it would have to fit within the 5V 500mA basic specification, which the Raspberry Pi 3 exceeded long ago. > It was a "microcontroller" you could program in Python It was never a microcontroller by any definition of the word. Raspberry Pi foundation has released microcontrollers that run MicroPython in a very user-friendly format https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/micropython.html https://www.raspberrypi.com/documentation/microcontrollers/m...
  - margalabargala 5mo ago
    > FYI you can run the Raspberry Pi 5 without a fan or even a heatsink. It will safely throttle itself if it gets too hot. What's the point of doing so though? If you're doing this, you're obviously using the wrong device. If all you need is to run some python scripts in a Linux environment, you should use a Pi 3 or Pi 0w2. Agree with your other points.
    - Aurornis 5mo ago
      Having the burst performance is helpful. Most light workloads are very bursty. When you type a command or click on something you want latency to be low. Having the overhead to get it done quickly at the full clockspeed is good if you are latency sensitive. Throttling has become a bad word. Some feel compelled to avoid it at all costs, doing things like buying big coolers and running synthetic benchmarks to avoid it. Unless you're doing sustained workloads where you need all of the performance, allowing a little throttling is fine.
- teaearlgraycold 5mo ago
  Something can't be a microcontroller if it runs Linux.
  - monocasa 5mo ago
    I wouldn't quite go that far. Linux runs on nommu systems. With some psram you should be able to get a version to run on at least the rp2350 using the riscv cores with relatively minimal fuss. Is that a good idea? Well, not really.
  - daemin 5mo ago
    Bare metal or bare bootloader only right?
    - pjmlp 5mo ago
      Or stuff like FreeRTOS, NuttX, Zephyr, and co.
  - Lerc 5mo ago
    You can run Linux on this https://dmitry.gr/images/uARM_big.png https://dmitry.gr/images/uARM_big.png
- newswasboring 5mo ago
  Personally I have never seen Raspberry Pi as anything but a small personal computer. I've maintained a home server which get upgraded as Pi's upgrade. It runs well and manages my media, files and now running hermes agent. I remember even the first time it was introduced to me was with look it runs linux and you can probably run VLC on it.
ssl-3 5mo ago
They'll do whatever they do. Maybe a tick-tock release cycle (one with new features and some speed, the next with the ~same features and more speed) is where they're headed, and maybe that makes sense. They wouldn't be the first. I'd love to see even-lower-RAM versions, though. Most of what I use Raspberry Pis for at home for is not RAM-hungry at all. My Pi4 network router has 2GB because that was the smallest/cheapest version at release when I got it, but the system itself consistently only uses about 64MB of RAM. It'd do perfectly well and have a ton of breathing room with just 128MB of RAM (which will never happen, but if it did happen...). I suspect the Pi4 that I use as a set-top box with Kodi would be fine with 512MB. I've used Zero Ws for all kinds of things over the years and never felt RAM-starved with their little 512MB of RAM. So I'm learning towards 512MB. But sure: 1GB options would also be fine even if it does double the price. Our comments serve to demonstrate that there's room in the marketplace for different SKUs with different memory capacities. :)
- LtWorf 5mo ago
  > I suspect the Pi4 that I use as a set-top box with Kodi would be fine with 512MB. How do you cope with high resolution videos?
throwaway27448 5mo ago
I think exactly the opposite: we have no shortage of embedded crap we can buy; what is useful is dismembering intel. It would be better if the pi were risc v but this will do for now.
wolpoli 5mo ago
Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. Their niche is the industrial/embedded space. For that market, power consumption doesn't matter. What matters is that each model is guaranteed to be available till a specific date.
- swiftcoder 5mo ago
  > Raspberry Pi isn't in direct competition with N150's. They may not have intended to be in direct competition, but in the current crisis conditions they are priced about the same as equivalent RAM/storage N150s, have even worse supply issues than the N150s, and have worse performance/watt than the N150s. Its mighty hard to recommend them for new projects at the moment (nor any of the Pi clones, which are also rocketing in cost and dwindling in availability)
  - pyreko 5mo ago
    I think they were kinda competing for some people even before then, there was a good amount of time where people looked at Pis as a decent small, cheap, and low-power computer to throw server stuff at. Back then there wasn't much competition but mini PCs have entirely trounced them for this now outside of certain niche cases.
- michaelt 5mo ago
  Among the people making things like a DIY NAS, who want fast USB, lots of cores and RAM, small-ish, not-too-bad power consumption, running Linux; and not caring much about GPIOs or passive cooling, it’s in competition with the N150 Among people who want GPIOs and network connectivity, a low price and an open, microcontroller like experience, not caring much about USB speeds and lots of cores and running Linux and suchlike, it’s in competition with the esp8266 & esp32. And the previous generations of RPi.
  - wolpoli 5mo ago
    The Pi SBCs are squeezed in between the SFFs and the microcontrollers for many use cases. It's only a good fit if there is a need for the GPIOs/Linux/Display. For anything else, there are better products out there.
moffkalast 5mo ago
A Raspberry Pi with sleep and hibernation is like asking Valve to make Half Life 3. They just can't. It doesn't compute.
wmf 5mo ago
Ideally each RPi generation should keep the same price (or lower now that it's gotten so high) but with better performance. If they can't do that they just shouldn't create a new generation.
- vardump 5mo ago
  Sure (inflation adjusted), but I see no harm if they also provide higher specced SBCs.
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  I don't think the Raspberry PI foundation has the buying power to control RAM prices.
  - wmf 5mo ago
    The price was creeping up long before the DRAM shortage. They're totally doomed now.
hedora 5mo ago
Is there some serious astroturfing going on with the N100/N150, or am I just jaded? I have a bunch of old intel atom boards laying around. The Intel Compute Stick (TM) burnt out its flash root drive in a few months. The C2000 board I had burnt out the clock pin to drive the bios. I have a Clover Trail with a PowerVR GPU (I thought I was getting an intel GPU because it was branded Intel Graphics or similar, but nope!) that lost Windows support very quickly after launch, and has no GPU drivers for any other OS. Instead of being fooled 4 times in a row, I looked into using an N150 for a NAS, but this time I held off a bit until after launch so I could research it first. Lo-and-behold, they all have crazy PCIe / memory subsystem data corruption issues. I guess there are some chicken bits for the OS developers to set if the kernel can stay up long enough after boot without a panic. Why would anyone buy this for a NAS / embedded use case?
- tredre3 5mo ago
  > I looked into using an N150 for a NAS [...] Lo-and-behold, they all have crazy PCIe / memory subsystem data corruption issues. Source? I've never had a single problem with PCIE on N100/N150/N200. I have had a ton of issues with drive corruption on the pi, both via USB3 and PCIE.
  - hedora 5mo ago
    https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4-Lands-PCID-INVLPG https://www.phoronix.com/news/Linux-6.4-Lands-PCID-INVLPG https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48343.0 https://forum.opnsense.org/index.php?topic=48343.0
    - adrian_b 5mo ago
      All CPUs from all vendors have tons of bugs like this, which are mitigated in the operating system kernels, e.g. in the Linux kernel. I am pretty certain that the Linux kernel must also contain specific code for various quirks of all Arm CPUs that have been used in the various Raspberry Pi models. Intel had indeed several bugs that were more ugly than usual in their recent CPU models, like also MONITOR not working correctly in Lunar Lake, but even so, Intel still has better documentation for their CPU bugs than most vendors of Arm-based CPUs. In any case, the bug that you linked was solved in the kernel years ago and it affects a privileged instruction that cannot be used in user programs. It does not have any direct relationship with memory and PCIe corruption. Memory corruption can occur inside the operating kernel only in certain circumstances, when the kernel changes the mapping of global memory pages and then writes the new pages, but the writes go to the old pages. However, this could happen only until 3 years ago, before the bug was known.
canpan 5mo ago
I wonder how they are positioned now in the market. During covid I wanted a small low power always on server. I thought about Raspi, but at the time it was expensive and I went with an intel nuc, for a similar price. Now if I wanted to do hobby electronics, I heard I should look into esp32 or stm32..
- virgil_disgr4ce 5mo ago
  Well... "hobby electronics" is extraordinarily broad :) It depends massively on what kind of DX you want. If you want to work with a 'regular' operating system, you're looking more in the RPi direction. If you want to write straight-up C firmware, then yeah, the esp and stms are both great.
- platevoltage 5mo ago
  The things that keeps stopping me from using one for my server is the IO. the PCIe lane on the Pi 5 was a great addition, but it isn't quite sufficient.
- hn_throw2025 5mo ago
  I use a Pi 4B as a 24/7 home server in a country where domestic electricity is expensive (and worsening). Each Pi release is more powerful, but uses more energy. I found the Pi 4B to be the sweet spot for me, because it is the earliest model to support USB booting, gigabit Ethernet, and offer > 1GB RAM. Perhaps a used one would fit your purposes and budget? I currently use it to run PiHole, serve media via SMB, host Postgres & Redis, and run some custom written Dockerized apps. Home Assistant to possibly follow, too. The current load seems reasonable in htop, but I haven’t looked into burst scenarios.
vachina 5mo ago
The entire raspi foundation is a marketing department. Raspi products is making zero sense ever since the Pi 2. > encroaching on the territory of the Intel N150. It’s nerdier to say you built your homelab on a Raspi, and that’s what keeps the foundation afloat.
thisisabore 5mo ago
I'd be interested in seeing them partner with some of the other interesting and open-ish players, like Pine64 or Radxa, to push for a more standardised, unified SBC landscape. But that's not as good for PR as "bigger, faster, better" even if that comes with the problems you mentioned.
perarneng 5mo ago
> Raspberry Pi Zero 3W with proper sleep states to reduce sleep power consumption, lower idle power while awake, and 1 GB of RAM even if it doubles the price. Yes, that would be kind of a dream device, perhaps also if it could suspend the os when asleep so it doesn't have to boot every time but I guess that might the standard way of doing it.
ChrisRR 5mo ago
We need a 5 lite. The specs of the 5 without the massive power draw and heat generation
- moffkalast 5mo ago
  At least now they literally cannot pull more power over USB 5V, because they maxed out the spec. It's even slightly beyond it.
- ianburrell 5mo ago
  I want normal USB-C power. I also want USB-C video output, they might need to replace USB-A port with USB-C. What would be really nice is Zero 3 with 2 USB-C ports and video output. Then have something cheap for projects that was flexible. Finally, they should replace the header with new extension mechanism. Something that does PCIe, USB, and power. That would allow new extension boards including one that goes GPIO breakout.
vablings 5mo ago
A refresh for a Pi Zero with real sleep. lower power consumption and moving away from GPIO would be awesome. Stuff like a dedicated i2c connector, PoE support and display over USB-C. M5Stack and other esp32 based ecosystems rule the world for MCU so the Zero just need to be linux SOC with all the fancy bells and whistles with good driver support

peteforde 5mo ago

Pi's refusal to drop a USB-C on Pico due to cost increases is a terrible call IMO. I seriously cannot fathom being someone doing development who wouldn't pay $0.50 extra to purge the last micro USB from their desktop.

mrlambchop 5mo ago
A very small point, but pulling from a feather form factor BOM to compare. $0.12 for microUSB female connector (rated 1A) $0.26 for a USB-C female (rated 3A). Needs 2 x resistors (< $0.01), 20% larger board area I think the power capabilities are the biggest item. If you want to pull higher current from a laptop for development or supply from a wall, you have to switch to USB-C. I don't think either of these prices are that aggressive - pretty sure the cost comes down at volume.
- bee_rider 5mo ago
  I wonder if it would be worthwhile for them to produce both. Well, it will be hard to compare because the design cost doesn’t show up in the BOM, haha. But it seems like it would be useful nowadays, since some laptop have mostly USB-C connectors, and USB-C to USB-C is pretty common. I’ve never seen a C to Micro. Do they even exist?
  - sagarm 5mo ago
    I've always used USB-C to USB-A dongle + USB-A to micro B.
  - peteforde 5mo ago
    I have an unfair bias because I design PCBs as a significant part of my job, and switching out to USB on this board appears to be a non-issue. I have a Pico in front of me, and there's plenty of room there for a USB-C footprint and the two 5.1k resistors. Given that, I cannot reasonably agree that the "design" stage is significant. In other words, it's a change that I would make to my own board in 2-5 minutes because the stakes are low. My ballpark guess is that such a change at RPi would have to go through a proposal stage, a PCB change review, and then there would be dozens of places to update documentation. Since backwards compatibility is non-optional, this would result in a separate SKU, which means that the whole distribution chain needs to be updated with a new product. So, I acknowledge that when you're working at their scale any change like this is the definition of non-trivial. What I don't agree with is the conclusion that it's not still clearly the right thing to do.

bradfa 5mo ago

Would love to see actual security focused hardware/software features, like full OP-TEE, fTPM (or a more ideally a real physical TPM), and similar. For example, so that the OTP isn't the only way to store a disk encryption unlock key. The existing secure boot mechanisms aren't bad, but allowing for more than one public key hash in OTP would be nice, too. These kinds of things are expected to be on modern embedded SOCs and SOMs now.

sq_ 5mo ago
A physical TPM with their overall high-quality software support would be awesome. I've spent far too much time messing around trying to get TPMs working over SPI or I2C to meet security requirements with 4Bs and 5s over the years.
- hedora 5mo ago
  You do know those are trivially bypassed with a signal processor, right? If physical access is outside your threat model, that's OK, but it makes (for example) the forced Win11 upgrade for DRM^H^H^H boot integrity enforcement seem ridiculous. https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing https://pulsesecurity.co.nz/articles/TPM-sniffing
  - bradfa 5mo ago
    The article you link to explains how to defeat the sniffing with TPM 2.0. But also, there’s no reason a physical TPM has to be a separate IC package.
  - sq_ 5mo ago
    Yeah, fair enough. "Compliance" is probably the phrasing I should've used, rather than "security". I've been curious for a while about the overall taxonomy of security, especially for embedded platforms. It seems like the only hope is defense in depth, given the power glitching attacks and the like that you can find demonstrated. Specific to the Raspberry Pi, I believe I even saw a thread at some point where one of their firmware engineers was making the case that secure boot on the Pi 5 was equivalent to a TPM in almost any reasonable threat model, since, in either case, you were out of luck if an attacker had physical access and was willing to put in enough effort.

Zenst 5mo ago

[flagged]

porphyra 5mo ago

The 8GB Pi 5, at $170 [1], is encroaching on Jetson Orin Nano Super's $240 price point [2]. But the Jetson has a faster CPU (newer a78ae cores rather than a76) and, obviously, a whole-ass GPU. [1] https://www.microcenter.com/product/673711/raspberry-pi-5 https://www.microcenter.com/product/673711/raspberry-pi-5 [2] https://www.microcenter.com/product/691058/nvidia-jetson-orin-nano-super-developer-kit https://www.microcenter.com/product/691058/nvidia-jetson-ori...

gh02t 5mo ago
Nvidia's software platform for the whole Jetson series was, at least in my experience, absolutely awful on the Jetson Nano and Orin boards I worked on. Has that improved at all? I did not appreciate that the only option they provided was a full desktop version of ancient Ubuntu... and even flashing the OS image was a bizarre process. Edit: looks like they at least have a better headless option now.
- pta2002 5mo ago
  Nowadays upstream Linux with UEFI mostly works, with their out of tree drivers. I’ve managed to make it work in NixOS with the stock kernel. Look at the open embedded L4T project, they have some recipes for building that. No need to use nvidia’s kernel anymore! Also, supposedly on the second half of 2026 they were going to be moving even more stuff out of their Jetson-specific drivers as they already do for their slightly newer chips (so you could use the standard drivers, and standard CUDA builds). Let’s see how that turns out.
  - gh02t 5mo ago
    Yeah, one of my bigger complaints especially on the Nano was the GPU only had really limited model support (iirc, mostly tflite but maybe I'm misremembering) and it sounds like the newer ones are more normal. That and what seems from the docs to be better headless support would be major improvements. Going further to mainline distro support would make them interesting to me again. I was always disappointed by the Nano as it was a pretty capable device, but it seemed like not many people picked it up as a platform for cool things which I always attributed to the software.

dirtikiti 5mo ago

I have bought an rpi at every generation. And I still have yet to find an actual use for them. Everything they do from a compute perspective is just better with a mini pc or old laptop with a mobile spec chip. Everything they do from a programmability perspective is just better with a microcontroller specific to the task. I just don't see the actual market position for these things. They were supposed to be a cheap board, but you can't actually buy them cheaply because the vendors upcharge so much.

dont__panic 5mo ago
[flagged]
- dirtikiti 5mo ago
  I'm a jerk because I've bought them and tried to find a use case for them, but found they weren't as good as other solutions? You have issues.
  - dont__panic 5mo ago
    Perhaps I was a shade too facetious. But honestly, you thought the Pi 3+ was so significantly different from the 3 that you imagined it might finally make your use case worth it? I used a Pi 4 as a home server for literal years. For a lot of light work, the Pi works great, consumes very little power, and (before the 5) required no active cooling. I understand that if you're running machine learning pipelines at home, you might want a mini PC. But it feels like most developers severely overestimate how much CPU power you need to run most services.
sq_ 5mo ago
I think at this point the brand reputation and software quality are a big selling point. If you're trying to build a couple of units of some embedded thing where you need to toggle some GPIOs or serial devices in response to requests over the network, but don't have the expertise or resources to do it with a microcontroller, a Pi is a great option - you know you'll have software support, and you know that the vendor will be making the exact thing you bought for 5-10y. For hobbyist stuff at home, I agree, though. A mini PC is probably better for homelab stuff, and an RP2350 or ESP32 is probably better for anything embedded or battery powered that you want to do.

exe34 5mo ago

The only way I'll buy another raspberry pi is if they come with a power supply that's guaranteed to work with them. I got tired of the random reboots in the night and replaced my media center/NAS with an old Nuc.

wao0uuno 5mo ago
Official power supply is sold separately. Pis work fine with unofficial USB-PD power supplies but will limit maximum current for USB devices. I have two Pi 5's and one 4 and they all are perfectly stable when powered with an old Lenovo laptop charger.
- hedora 5mo ago
  It's still a huge pain point. I keep a magic "correctly sized, but provides clean power" USB charger with my Pi in a drawer, because I know that, if I lose that charger, I'm buying a replacement. It's unclear to me why they're so borderline. Maybe USB-C would help?
  - wao0uuno 5mo ago
    I don't know much about older models but on 4 and 5 they chose to use a weird power standard to reduce cost. Just buy the official charger. They're not expensive.

atoav 5mo ago

I run the media lab at one of Europe's must prolific art universities. The variant I tend to use most is the 3B+. Reasons: - full sized HDMI connector - headphone connector - good bang for the buck If I had one wish for any new product in the Raspberry line it would be: Do the Raspberry Pi 3++ or something. Same thing. Faster, but with USB-C power connector, 4K Video resolution, 2× USB-C I/O, 2× USB-A peripherals and maybe M.2 support.

Rochus 5mo ago
Same here. The 2b, 3b and Zero 2 have the best cost-benefit ratio. I recently migrated the Oberon System 3 to those three boards and particulary the Zero is a great host for this bare-bone system: https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberonsystem3native/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/oberonsystem3native/. I hope the Raspi company postpones the end of life date of the 3b and Zero 2.

modeless 5mo ago

I recently found out about the Radxa Dragon Q6A. A Qualcomm chip with faster CPUs, a good GPU, a DSP and AI accelerator, and a hardware video encoder seems very compelling. It even supports Windows if you want that for some reason.

Narishma 5mo ago
And poor software support.

Onavo 5mo ago

The raspberry pi CEO said that some of the boards will be delayed because of RAM prices. https://www.notebookcheck.net/Raspberry-Pi-discusses-Zero-3-W-single-board-computer-with-un-zero-like-price-point-if-released-today.1307659.0.html https://www.notebookcheck.net/Raspberry-Pi-discusses-Zero-3-...

swiftcoder 5mo ago
As someone who has just had to migrate a project off of radxa due to ongoing supply issues... good luck getting your hands on more than one or two samples of those :/
- Onavo 5mo ago
  For your interest https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCs/comments/1tmuy3a/radxa_rock_pi_4b_units_sale/ https://www.reddit.com/r/SBCs/comments/1tmuy3a/radxa_rock_pi...

armx40 5mo ago

My opinion is that Raspberry Pi has to release an NPU, and start/revolutionise the open source NPU communities and tech. Raspberry Pi's has to find itself useful in vision AI applications (extremely common in industries these days). Without it I think Arduino with its new Qualcomm boards will kill it.

deleted 5mo ago
[deleted]
imtringued 5mo ago
Kinda agree. They have a big opportunity to be "the" NPU company. The vast majority of NPUs are a poorly documented mess. The only one with good documentation is the one from AMD.

binaryturtle 5mo ago

The PI5 was a real downgrade for me with its lack of proper hardware h264 decoding as in the earlier versions (playing back h264 is my primary use case.) I will buy a PI6, if that comes back, else I stay with my reliable, and passively cooled, PI3.

404mm 5mo ago

The flagship Pi boards are also hitting the thermal design ceiling of what makes sense for this size or platform. Pi 5 is IMO already on that edge because it pretty much needs active cooling and a dedicated power supply. Going past this point means it will compete with much more powerful platforms and likely loose due to it’s architectural limitations.

synack 5mo ago

They aren't actually shipping the new RP2350 silicon revision on Pico 2 boards yet. If you want the errata fixes, you've gotta source the chips and make your own boards.

synergy20 5mo ago

For me, Pi6 shall focus on NPU to run edge models instead of getting into minipc space, e.g. 10TOPS built-in, that will be slightly better than Rockchip 3588 which was produced 4 years back at 6TOPS, and way more powerful than NXP's 2TOPS. 10TOPS is the sweet spot for edge AI as far as I can tell.

akazantsev 5mo ago
Designing a chip for one person is doomed to fail as a business.
- rjsw 5mo ago
  More than one person is buying Rockchip powered systems. A new high-end RPi has to at least match the hardware features of a RK3588 or RK3688.

qzgrid37 5mo ago

[dead]

glouwbug 5mo ago

Looks like the RPI5 is like $200 in Canada now. We might have lost the plot

platevoltage 5mo ago
Yeah, we have. We decided the world's RAM production capability would be better suited for datacenters so we can cheat on our homework.
- glouwbug 5mo ago
  I always wanted to wrangle ~10 of these together and practice distributed computing for the price of ~$200. That was a 2014 dream. I guess instead someone else ran with all of Jensen's polygon drawers and Hynix's backlog. Que sera
  - Dylan16807 5mo ago
    Zero 2s can still hit that price, can't they? With much better CPUs than the 2014 dream. And if you're not worried about CPU you can get a pile of Pi Picos or ESP32s. Actually, considering that the original zero had a better CPU than 2014 Pis, I'm surprised you didn't get a 10 pack of those when they were extra cheap.
    - glouwbug 5mo ago
      Zero 2s look to be about ~$50 here in Canada, but thanks for looking out. I'll reconsider for the future
bpye 5mo ago
The Steam Deck price in Canada went up by something like 50% yesterday also - it's now over $1100 for the 512GB OLED, up from just under $700.
- glouwbug 5mo ago
  Starting to feel like Europe over here

63 5mo ago

It seems like esp32 boards have taken over the pi's original market as developing for them has gotten easier while pis have gotten more expensive

platevoltage 5mo ago
These two products don't even have the same use case.

stdatomic 5mo ago

It used to be that raspberry pi was a cheap pc. Well it's not longer cheap. And at their price point, you could just get a mini PC and have better performance, or if you want to use it as a microcontroller, you can just use an arduino, esp32, or an actual microcontroller for a fraction of the price and power consumption. So, what do people actually do with these pies?

qsera 5mo ago
Exactly. I think they are a bit more long lasting, but that is debatable.
jan_Sate 5mo ago
The form factor. It's tiny compared with mini PC. Unlike other SBC, the software support's good that it just work as advertised (GPIO, graphic hardware acceleration, etc.). If you're using it for work, it also has stable supply chain / commitment that you can ensure to be able to obtain a unit in at least the next few years. But you're right. It's pretty overpriced for its performance. If I'm after the GPIO I'd just use a microcontroller. If I'm setting up a headless server I'd just use pretty much any other SBCs or mini PC. I'm personally not a big fan of Raspberry Pi. The cheap Raspberry Pi's still available as Raspberry Pi Zero tho, if that's what you're after.
pjmlp 5mo ago
Getting a mini PC with ARM and first class Linux support from the OEM.
mickael-kerjean 5mo ago
I've got one set aside to play with v4l2m2m. Once that's working, it should improve video encoding support in my OSS project (https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash https://github.com/mickael-kerjean/filestash)

DoctorOetker 5mo ago

> When asked about the Pi Zero 2W, Eben said the substrate supply is constrained—basically, so many AI chips are being made that even older chips using older process nodes have to fight for the actual silicon wafers to use to make the chips. I keep hearing voices invalidate each other, is the bottleneck the raw silicon substrate, or fab capacity? What purity levels are required for say Pi Zero 2W? The volume of monocrystalline silicon used in solar panels is orders of magnitude greater than the volume used in IC's / RAM production. Is the actual bottleneck 11N + grade silicon wafers while 6N to 9N grade used in solar panels remains unaffected?

qq66 5mo ago

The thing I've always wanted in a Raspberry Pi is an SBC and microcontroller on one board.

alexellisuk 5mo ago

I was thinking about the RPi 6 yesterday whilst realising I couldn't set up my RPi Zero 2W anymore - the OS has become burdensome - tied strictly to an imager, that gives me an allergic reaction. Yes - they did all this for the uninitiated - but for Raspberry Pi OS Lite - bring back this experience: dd the image, write ssh into the boot drive, SSH in - change password, fully set up in almost zero fuss or effort. Then I actually couldn't set the thing up because of the mini HDMI connection - I have a mini to HDMI cable, but to use my portable screen with it I need mini HDMI to MINI HDMI. Don't get me started on micro HDMI - almost everyone of of those connectors I've bought slips off or breaks in the device. Every time I go to set up an RPi5 I end up having to order another one of those tiny connectors. Full HDMI for all new devices please. Even if the second display can't be connected. These days a 175 GBP N95 from a no-name Chinese OEM on Amazon, with 16 GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA SSD is way better value and performance - and importantly - zero fuss - standard setup.

akazantsev 5mo ago
> __These days__ a 175 GBP N95 from a no-name Chinese OEM on Amazon, with 16 GB of RAM and a 500GB SATA SSD is way better value and performance - and importantly - zero fuss - standard setup. "These days" seems to be over for now. The prices went up there, and now the only affordable option is an old laptop's motherboards with DDR3 sticks. But passively cooled PCs are rare, so the Raspberry Pi still makes sense. As a bonus, it is easier to power and find a small UPS that will keep it running for hours.

esskay 5mo ago

Hard to care anymore. They made it abundantly clear they dont care about their original audience of makers and education anymore now that the industrial market are so reliant on them. Not to mention the whole crapping all over their customers on social media and then accusing them of some sort of coordinated 'attack' just made it clear they're clueless about their audience. The price increases were the end of the Pi being a viable option for most application in my eyes.

revengerwizard 5mo ago

I really really wished they released a Raspberry Pi running a RISC-V 23 processor :(

opan 5mo ago

>When asked about why Picos use micro USB and not USB-C, he said it's a cost issue. USB-C connectors are more expensive than micro USB, while also taking a tiny bit more board space. That said, USB-C will probably happen someday. Glad I'm not alone in caring about this. All I want from them is a Pico with a USB-C port. When using them for keyboards and arcade controllers you either need to wire up a separate port (and USB-C is awful to solder) or use someone else's variant with one on there. I have had issues in both cases. The Open-Frame1 leverless controller needed me to either pay for assembly or fail at soldering on the extra port myself (did the former for batch 1, got cocky when ordering batch 2 and didn't pay assembly, never got any of the new boards working). Flatbox rev 5 used an RP2040-Zero from Waveshare, which initially seemed fine but later turned out to have major bouncing issues. Typing on a virtual keyboard with it was nearly impossible, all the extra inputs being detected. The amount of debounce needed to be added in GP2040-CE settings to completely solve it resulted in it being much higher latency. I heard a theory that it was due to a lack of filtering on the MCU. Meanwhile Haute42 started pumping out incredibly cheap leverless controllers in all sorts of designs within a year of me building 10 Flatboxes. They're so cheap you can't really DIY one cheaper anymore unless you need them in bulk, and they have no bouncing/input issues. They even have extension ports to help deal with console auth. Their non-3d-printed buttoncaps also don't break as much, though I did eventually have one break after living in my backpack a while. I'd like to take another crack at building a solid leverless someday. A new Pico with a USB-C port would probably be enough motivation. Also I should note that part of why USB-C is such a big deal on a game controller is because they all use it now, and I've got lots of long USB-C to A cables connected to consoles and my PC, I can easily switch controllers at the user-facing end without having to re-run a cable. I can go from my Open-Frame1 playing Rivals of Aether to my Steam Controller playing Crab Champions to my Haute42 M16 playing Melty Blood all with the same cable routed under my desk, often without leaving my chair.