Raspberry Pi


Raspberry Pi is a series of small single-board computers originally developed in the United Kingdom by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in collaboration with Broadcom. To commercialize the product and support its growing demand, the Foundation established a commercial entity, now known as Raspberry Pi Holdings.
The Raspberry Pi was originally created to help teach computer science in schools, but gained popularity for many other uses due to its low cost, compact size, and flexibility. It is now used in areas such as industrial automation, robotics, home automation, IoT devices, and hobbyist projects.
The company's products range from simple microcontrollers to computers that the company markets as being powerful enough to be used as a general purpose PC. Computers are built around a custom designed system on a chip and offer features such as HDMI video/audio output, USB ports, wireless networking, GPIO pins, and up to 16 GB of RAM. Storage is typically provided via microSD cards.
In 2015, the Raspberry Pi surpassed the ZX Spectrum as the best-selling British computer of all time., 68million units had been sold.

History

Origins and launch (2008–2012)

The Raspberry Pi Foundation was established in 2008 by a group including Eben Upton, in response to a noticeable decline in both the number and skill level of students applying to study computer science at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory. The foundation's goal was to create a low-cost computer to help rekindle interest in programming among schoolchildren.
This mission was inspired by the aims of the BBC Micro computer of the early 1980s, which was developed by Acorn Computers as part of a BBC initiative to promote computer literacy in UK schools. The names "Model A" and "Model B" were chosen as a deliberate homage to the BBC Micro. The name "Raspberry Pi" combines the fruit-themed naming convention used by early computer companies with a nod to the Python programming language.
The first prototypes resembled small USB sticks. By August 2011, fifty functionally complete "alpha" boards were produced for testing, with demonstrations showing them running a Debian-based desktop and handling 1080p video playback. In late 2011, twenty-five "beta" boards were finalized, and to generate publicity before the official launch, ten of these were auctioned on eBay in early 2012.
The first commercial Raspberry Pi, the Model B, was launched on 29 February 2012, with an initial price of $35. Demand far exceeded expectations, causing the websites of the two initial licensed distributors, Premier Farnell and RS Components, to crash from high traffic. Initial batches sold out almost immediately, with one distributor reporting over 100,000 pre-orders on the first day. The lower-cost $25 Model A followed on 4 February 2013.
The Raspberry Pi did not ship with a pre-installed operating system. While ports of RISC OS 5 and Fedora Linux were available, a port of Debian called Raspbian quickly became the standard. Released in July 2012, it was optimized to leverage the Raspberry Pi's floating-point unit, offering significant performance gains. Raspberry Pi quickly endorsed it as the official recommended OS, and by September 2013, the company assumed leadership of Raspbian's development.

Corporate evolution

In 2012, the Foundation restructured, creating Raspberry Pi Ltd. to handle engineering and commercial activities, with Eben Upton as its CEO. This allowed the Raspberry Pi Foundation to focus solely on its charitable and educational mission. Raspberry Pi Ltd. was renamed Raspberry Pi Ltd. in 2021. In June 2024, the company went public on the London Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol RPI, becoming Raspberry Pi Holdings.

Post-launch production (2012–2014)

Following the launch, the first units reached buyers in April 2012. To address overwhelming demand and initial supply chain issues, the Foundation ramped up production to 4,000 units per day by July. The first batch of 10,000 boards was produced in factories located in Taiwan and China. A significant strategic shift occurred in September 2012, when manufacturing began moving to a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales. During this period, the hardware was also refined: the Model B Revision 2.0 board was announced with minor corrections, and in October, its included RAM was doubled to 512 MB.
The post-launch period focused heavily on software and ecosystem development. In August 2012, the Foundation enabled hardware-accelerated H.264 video encoding and began selling licenses for MPEG-2 and VC-1 codecs. A major milestone for the open-source community occurred in October 2012, when the Foundation released the Videocore IV graphics driver as free software. While the claim of it being the first fully open-source ARM SoC driver was debated, the move was widely praised. This effort culminated in February 2014 with the release of full documentation for the graphics core and a complete source release of the graphics stack under a 3-clause BSD license.

Product line expansion (2014–present)

In 2014, the Raspberry Pi product line began to diversify. April saw the release of the Compute Module, a miniature Raspberry Pi in a small form factor designed for industrial and embedded applications, which would soon become the largest market for the computers. In July the Model B+ was released with a refined design featuring additional USB ports and a more efficient board layout that established the form factor for future models. A smaller, cheaper Model A+ was released in November. A significant leap in performance came in February 2015 with the Raspberry Pi 2, which featured a 900 MHz quad-core CPU and 1 GB of RAM. Following its release, the price of the Model B+ was lowered to $25, a move some observers linked to the emergence of lower-priced competitors.
The Raspberry Pi Zero, launched in November 2015, radically redefined the entry point for computing at a price of just $5. In February 2016, the Raspberry Pi 3 marked another major milestone by integrating a 64-bit processor, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. The product line continued to expand with the wireless-enabled Raspberry Pi Zero W, the faster Raspberry Pi 3B+, Raspberry Pi 3A+, and Compute Module 3+.
The Raspberry Pi 4, launched in June 2019, represented another major performance leap with a faster processor, up to 8 GB of RAM, dual-monitor support, and USB 3.0 ports. A compute module version launched in October 2020. This era saw further diversification with the Raspberry Pi 400 in November 2020, and the Raspberry Pi Pico in January 2021. The Pico, based on the in-house designed RP2040 chip, marked the company's first entry into the low-cost microcontroller market. The Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, introduced in 2021, featured a faster processor, providing a significant performance boost while maintaining the low-cost, compact form factor.
The global chip shortage starting in 2020, as well as an uptake in demand starting in early 2021, notably affected the Raspberry Pi, causing significant availability issues from that time onward. The company explained its approach to the shortages in 2021, and April 2022, explaining that it was prioritising business and industrial customers.
The Raspberry Pi 5 was released in October 2023, featuring an upgraded CPU and GPU, up to 16 GB of RAM, a PCIe interface for fast peripherals and an in-house designed southbridge chip. Updated versions of the Compute Module and keyboard computer based on the Pi 5's architecture were subsequently announced. The Raspberry Pi Pico 2, released in 2024, introduced the RP2350 microcontroller, featuring selectable dual-core 32-bit ARM Cortex-M33 or RISC-V processors, 520 KB of RAM, and 4 MB of flash memory.

Sales milestones

The Raspberry Pi's sales demonstrated remarkable growth. The one-millionth Pi was sold by October 2013, a figure that doubled just a month later. By February 2016, sales reached eight million units, surpassing the ZX Spectrum as the best-selling British computer of all time. Sales hit ten million in September 2016, thirty million by December 2019, and forty million by May 2021. As of its tenth anniversary in February 2022, a total of 46 million Raspberry Pis had been sold., 68 million units had been sold.

Series and generations

There are five main series of Raspberry Pi computers, each with multiple generations. Most models feature a Broadcom system on a chip with an integrated ARM-based central processing unit and an on-chip graphics processing unit. The exception is the Pico series, a microcontroller which uses the RP2040, a custom-designed SoC with an ARM-compatible CPU but no GPU.

Flagship series

The flagship Raspberry Pi series, often referred to simply as "Raspberry Pi", offers high-performance hardware, a full Linux operating system, and a variety of common ports in a compact form factor roughly the size of a credit card.
  • The Model B features a 700 MHz single-core 32-bit ARM11 CPU, a VideoCore IV GPU, 512 MB RAM and a 26-pin GPIO header.
  • The Model A is a lower-cost version with 256 MB RAM, no Ethernet, and fewer USB ports.
  • The Model B+ and Model A+ add a 40-pin GPIO header, microSD card support, and replace the RCA video connector with a combined 3.5 mm audio/video jack.
  • , v 1.1 includes a 900 MHz quad-core Cortex-A7 CPU and 1 GB of RAM.
  • The Raspberry Pi 2 Model B, v 1.2 or v 1.3 includes a 900 MHz quad-core Cortex-A53 CPU and 1 GB of RAM.
  • features a 1.2 GHz quad-core 64-bit Cortex-A53 CPU, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and USB boot support.
  • The Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ upgrades to a 1.4 GHz CPU, faster Ethernet, dual-band Wi-Fi, and Power over Ethernet support.
  • The Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ is the final A-series model, offering the same features as the 3B+, but with 512 MB RAM and in a smaller form factor.
  • introduces a 1.5 GHz quad-core Cortex-A72 CPU, a VideoCore VI GPU, USB 3.0 ports, true Gigabit Ethernet, support for dual 4K monitors, and options for 1, 2, 4, or 8 GB of RAM.
  • features a 2.4 GHz quad-core Cortex-A76 CPU, a VideoCore VII GPU, PCIe support, and options for 2, 4, 8, or 16 GB of RAM. It omits the 3.5 mm audio/video jack. In 2025, a version with 1GB RAM was added.