Raspberry Pi 4 announced

In case people haven't noticed, the Raspberry Pi 4 has been announced. Theoretically it's available but as is typical, everything is back-order (in the suppliers I deal with). There are some interesting updates:

1.5 GHz Quad Core
1, 2, or 4 GB of RAM (you choose at time of purchase)
Dual 4K display support (and switch to HDMI-C type connector)
New power (usb-c type connector)

I am looking forward to seeing how things progress for FreeBSD on RPi for this one. The specs are on-par with a low-end desktop/netbook type system.
 
I'm actually really interested in the programmable FPGA it supposedly has. Would be interesting to be able to play with that.

I didn't see that in any of the documentation. Is it mentioned on the raspberry pi site somewhere? A good FPGA that is configurable by software on the Pi itself could be a lot of fun to mess with.
 

A good FPGA that is configurable by software on the Pi itself could be a lot of fun to mess with.
Exactly what I was thinking too.
 
That would a shame, I was really looking forward to that.
 
FPGA is not listed and not visible so unless it's hiding in another chip, I wouldn't bet on it. The prototype probably had one because that's cheaper to prototype with then having to make new silicon? Also, April 1, FWIW.

AArch64 is destined for Tier 1 support, so this and the B+ have a lot to look forward to.
 
I was chatting with a friend last night, and part of me did think that this could be a nice little desktop for very simple work-loads. Most of my heavy lifting gets done on servers, but I could always have a beefier system nearby that isn't always powered on for cases where I'd need some extra umph, but power down when I just wanted to save power.
 
RPi is ideal for Media Player. BTW, it is time to add SATA port.

I didn't buy the RPi 3 (I have a RPi 2) specifically because I was really hoping the next one would have an M.2 slot for an SSD. Although that really breaks the price point as those things are expensive compared to there rest of the RPi components.

On the other hand, the RPi 4 sort of breaks the price point too. The 4GB model is well above the initial price of the RPi 3B+ when it came out.
 
At least it now has 2 USB 3.0 ports. And, as far as I know, the gigabit interface can really do gigabit speeds. With the previous Raspberries it was connected via USB bus and limited to 300Mbit/s.

I'm trying to get my hands on one but every shop I tried has them in back-order.
 
At least it now has 2 USB 3.0 ports. And, as far as I know, the gigabit interface can really do gigabit speeds. With the previous Raspberries it was connected via USB bus and limited to 300Mbit/s.

I'm trying to get my hands on one but every shop I tried has them in back-order.

I am happy about both the gigabit and USB 3.0 ports and looking forward to getting one myself.

When I first learned about the release of the RPi4, I went to my usual distributor and they has some in stock (according to their website). By the time I was ready to hit "buy", it informed me they were on back-order. Sure enough, going back to the product page, they were all out.

I decided to wait a few months. Not only for the RPi4 to be in-stock but also for an update to the Pi Desktop case and some cooling options specific to the 4. I can also hope that the smart people who port FreeBSD to the RPi will have the 4 included and maybe wifi working.
 
From the release blog post:

All three variants are launching today: we have initially built more of the 2GB variant than of the others, and will adjust the mix over time as we discover which one is most popular.

I'd imagine it's quite highly sought after, and if they really are 9-12 months ahead of schedule perhaps the production hadn't ramped up enough to provide a significant buffer?
 
From the release blog post:



I'd imagine it's quite highly sought after, and if they really are 9-12 months ahead of schedule perhaps the production hadn't ramped up enough to provide a significant buffer?

I've never seen any RPi have enough stock to cover demand within the first few months of release. I will happily wait a few months. Give the after-market a chance to make cool things and then buy.
 
I'm trying to get my hands on one but every shop I tried has them in back-order.

Its annoying but at least with the Pi Foundation, they do ultimately manage to keep up a stable supply after a month or two. Unlike many other projects that end up like "vaporware".

That said, if you don't need so much CPU power, around nowish (when a new model comes out), it is the perfect opportunity to stock up on the previous generation Pi 3 at second hand stores like CEX because they will be dirt cheap (~£3 here) since quite a lot of people simply want the latest model regardless and sell their old one.

Also if you know someone who works at a school you might be able to get a box full because it is too tricky to teach young kids using all slightly different models apparently.
 
... this could be a nice little desktop for very simple work-loads.
For a few weeks, I had a RPi3B on my workbench, while I was prototyping with it and setting it up (it now does full-time duty as an industrial control data acquisition system, which is a lot of big words for saying it measures and records a few water pressures and tank water levels). During the setup time, I had monitor, mouse and keyboard connected, and for fun I started X on it. Works fine, you can run a web browser, you can edit text in multiple terminal emulator windows. Boring. Just a normal Unix desktop. A little slow at time, but at $35 and 3W power consumption, I can handle that. So if the RPi3B was already a nice little desktop, the model 4 would definitely do it.

BTW, it is time to add SATA port.
With the USB 3.0, is that really necessary? And given the form factor, and the size of a SATA connector, I'm not sure that would work well, without making it physically incompatible with the established ecosystem.

And, as far as I know, the gigabit interface can really do gigabit speeds.
Which brings up a question: For what workload and application would the CPU and other interfaces be able to actually serve the 100 MByte/s that true gigabit can transport? Given the CPU speed and number of bytes, there are only 60 instructions one could execute per byte. That's not very much.

... I was really hoping the next one would have an M.2 slot for an SSD.
That might be feasible, by putting the M.2 "socket" on the bottom side of the board, parallel to the board; sort of in the same fashion that the SD card slot is mounted today. It might barely fit. Given that all the engineering information (circuit diagram, PC board layout) for the Pi is public, I think it should be possible for a vendor (either the Pi foundation or someone else) to try to build such a device, although I'm not 100% sure what the IP situation is.
 
The 3B+ was limited to 1/3 of the speed of Gigabit due to being connected via USB2. They probably just changed the bus and now the limiter is just how fast you can deal with stuff, which might be pretty fast if you serve out of RAM. There's four cores to do stuff with...

In order to get a SSD on it, you would probably have to disable USB 3. But you can see from the USB benchmarks at Tom's that it's probably not even going to help.

 
Which brings up a question: For what workload and application would the CPU and other interfaces be able to actually serve the 100 MByte/s that true gigabit can transport?
You can simply copy a file. For 4K video the files can be 10GB or more. Try to copy 10GB over 100mbit Ethernet with 10MB/s speed.
 
The Tom's Hardware benchmark seems to show that the hardware is capable of using USB storage up to ~350 MByte/s; at that point, I buy the argument that Gigabit ethernet could actually be fully utilized.
 
Hopefully we can finally run DUNE 2 on RPI 4 without huge lags. It was actually just for the 8086 DX or SX.
This would be cool.
 
That would be 486 DX or SX. :) I can supply you with the appropriate chip or hardware if you're interested. Anyway, I don't know sheepshit from dates when it comes to games, but I'd think the actual requirement would be a 386, unless more speed was required.
 
That would be 486 DX or SX. :) I can supply you with the appropriate chip or hardware if you're interested. Anyway, I don't know sheepshit from dates when it comes to games, but I'd think the actual requirement would be a 386, unless more speed was required.
Thank you very much.

Legacy Dune 2 runs quite slow.
The libraries and the arm cpu are actually the bottle neck.

OJ: Nice to run DOS, it just runs fast.
 
Back
Top