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Curious they're explicitly naming this the "final evolution". First up, I'd be surprised if they continued with a "Raspberry Pi 2" soon. The RPi is still very
by DCKing 12y ago
Curious they're explicitly naming this the "final evolution".
First up, I'd be surprised if they continued with a "Raspberry Pi 2" soon. The RPi is still very adequate for its original goals in education and will likely remain so; it hasn't ever been quite enough for people wanting a cheap server or media center except for those with very modest needs. Given their announced goals, I doubt that the creators are going to cater to the second group with a hypothetical RPi 2.
One thing that can be improved upon the original Pi is a more open SoC, but currently no SoC vendor will be able to provide a significantly more open one. Even if you pick an open source friendly SoC vendor like TI, there are currently no GPU designers for these SoCs that have open source drivers. It is unlikely improvemants can be made in that area that anytime soon.
The second thing they could improve for their education goals in the inclusion of a dual core SoC to be able to teach about concurrency. That would probably be quite a bit more expensive than the current Pi, for a feature that would not present that much more value for education.
So I'm wondering what they mean with this 'final' comment. Will they simply stay with supporting the current Raspberry Pi models? Or will they start developing a second Raspberry Pi? Or will they develop other computing devices for education?
- cpwright 12y agoI think that the fuller quote "the final evolution of the original Raspberry Pi" is important. The word "original" in there doesn't lead me to believe they are at the end of the road overall, just end of the road for this one design. To clarify, I expect to see a more complete redesign in the not-too-distant future. If nothing else, you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components.
- DCKing 12y ago> end of the road for this one design. Yeah, that's exactly the question I got from reading it. If they are implying the end of the road for this design, does that imply they have a next design? If so, why would they want to redesign? > you want to use components that are recent so you can keep producing more of them without increased costs for legacy components. Good point, didn't think of that. Is this a problem even on their scale?
- fulafel 12y ago> Even if you pick an open source friendly SoC vendor like TI, there are currently no GPU designers for these SoCs that have open source drivers. It is unlikely improvemants can be made in that area that anytime soon. Intel looks pretty good, current gen tablet SOC and followons have i915 lineage GPUs. Bay/Cherry Trail. AMD too, current tablet SOCs and upcoming ARM models. There are also reverse engineering efforts at various stages for Mali, Adreno, Tegra. Tegra even has some fledgling vendor support.