Friday 30 December 2011

Raspberry Pi From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raspberry Pi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Raspberry Pi
Raspberry Pi Logo.svg
Raspberry Pi board at TransferSummit 2011 cropped.jpg
Alpha development board at TransferSummit 2011
Developer Raspberry Pi Foundation
Release date Early 2012[1]
Introductory price US$25 or $35
Operating system Linux (Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux)[2],RISC OS[3]
CPU ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz
Memory 128 or 256 MiB
Website www.raspberrypi.org

The Raspberry Pi is a single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. Scheduled for public release in January 2012,[1] the foundation plans to release two versions that range from US$25 to $35 (GBP £16 to £22). It is intended to stimulate the teaching of basic computer science in schools.[4][1][5][6][7]

The design includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor, 128 or 256 megabytes (MiB) of memory, intended to run Linux or RISC OS.[2][3] The design does not include a built-inhard disk or solid-state drive, instead relying on an SD card for long-term storage.

Contents

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[edit]Educational underpinnings

Development of the device is undertaken by the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charitable organization registered with the Charity Commission. The foundation was founded on 5 May 2009 in Caldecote, South Cambridgeshire, UK.[8] Its aim is to "promote the study of computer science and related topics, especially at school level, and to put the fun back into learning computing."[9] The named trustees are David Braben, Jack Lang, Pete Lomas, Robert Mullins, Alan Mycroft and Eben Upton.[10] A podcast of an interview with Eben Upton was made available in June 2011.[11]

Raspberry Pi Foundation will be promoting learning mainly in the Python programming language,[12][13] but they also support BBC BASIC,[14] C[12] and Perl.[12] Many other languages[13] that have support for Linux and ARM will be available.

[edit]History

The earliest prototype board made in 2006 used the Atmel ATmega644 microcontroller.[15] The Foundation has made these board schematics available.[15]

The first ARM prototype version of the computer was mounted in a package the same size as a USB memory stick, and had a USB port on one end with an HDMI port on the other; shipping versions are planned to be credit card sized.

Fifty Alpha boards were delivered in August 2011. These boards are functionally identical to the planned model B[16], only larger to accommodate debug headers. Demos of the board have shown it running the LXDE desktop on Debian, Quake 3 at 1080p[17], and Full HD H.264 video over HDMI.[18]

In December 2011 one hundred model B Beta boards were assembled and tested[19]. The component layout of the Beta boards will be the final one. A single PCB routing error was discovered in the board design and will be fixed for the final release[20]. The Beta board was demoed booting Linux, playing a 1080p movie trailer and the Rightware Samurai OpenGL ES benchmark[21].

Raspberry Pi community forum administrators have mentioned that XBMC developers are also in development of a port of XBMC media center software to Broadcom BCM2835 SoC-based devices using the Raspberry Pi board as its reference platform.[22][23][4]

The logo was selected from a number submitted by members of the community. A shortlist of six was drawn up, with the final judging taking several days. The chosen design was created by Paul Beech, and is based on a buckyball.[24]

The board runs the Linux kernel. A development version of RISC OS 5 is being worked on[25] and was seen publicly in October 2011.[3]

[edit]Features

The foundation plans to release two models at launch. Model A will have 128 MiB memory, one USB port and no Ethernet controller, and will cost US$25, while model B will contain 256 MiB memory, two USB ports and a 10/100 Ethernet controller and will cost US$35. The Raspberry Pi will use the Linux operating system. Debian GNU/Linux, Iceweasel, KOffice and Python are planned to be bundled with the Raspberry Pi.[1]

[edit]Specifications

Model AModel B
Target price:[1] US$25 (GBP £16) US$35 (GBP £22)
SoC:[1] Broadcom BCM2835 (CPU + GPU + DSP + SDRAM)
CPU: 700 MHz ARM1176JZF-S core (ARM11 family)
GPU: Broadcom VideoCore IV,[26] OpenGL ES 2.0, 1080p30 H.264 high-profile decode
Memory (SDRAM): 128 MiB 256 MiB
USB 2.0 ports: 1 2 (via integrated USB hub)
Video outputs:[1] Composite RCA, HDMI
Audio outputs:[1] 3.5 mm jack, HDMI
Onboard storage: SD / MMC / SDIO card slot
Onboard network:[1] None 10/100 wired Ethernet (RJ45)
Low-level peripherals: GPIO pins, SPI, I²C, UART[26]
Real-time clock:[1] None
Power ratings: 500 mA, (2.5 Watt) [1] 700 mA, (3.5 Watt)
Power source:[1] 5 V via Micro USB or GPIO header
Size: 85.60mm × 53.98mm[27] (3.370 × 2.125 inch)
Supported operating systems: Debian GNU/Linux, Fedora, Arch Linux[2]
Unsupported operating systems: RISC OS[3] (shared source)

Model A and Model B are cultural references[28] to the original models of the British educational BBC Micro computer, developed by Acorn Computers who originally developed the ARM processors (the architecture of the Raspberry Pi) and operating system RISC OS which will be able to be run on it[3].

[edit]See also

‹ The template (Portal box) is being considered for merging. ›

Portal icon Computing portal
Portal icon Education portal

[edit]References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Raspberry Pi FAQ. Raspberry Pi Foundation FAQ. Retrieved 2011-12-10.
  2. ^ a b c "FAQs". Raspberry Pi. Retrieved November 03, 2011. "What Linux distros will be supported at launch? Debian, Fedora and ArchLinux will be supported from the start."
  3. ^ a b c d e Holwerda, Thom (October 31, 2011). "Raspberry Pi To Embrace RISC OS". OSNews. Retrieved November 01, 2011. "At the RISC OS London show, Theo Markettos, postdoctoral researcher in the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory talked about RISC OS on the Pi. "Adrian Lees has RISC OS booting on the Raspberry Pi into the full RISC OS desktop. Lack of USB drivers then prevents user interaction," RISCOScode transcribed Markettos' words, "Work in progress on cannibalising Linux USB drivers to get RISC OS running fully on the Raspberry Pi.""
  4. ^ a b Raspberry Pi: Cheat Sheet
  5. ^ Cellan-Jones, Rory (2011-05-05). "A £15 computer to inspire young programmers". BBC News. "blog with video"
  6. ^ Price, Peter (2011-06-03). "Can a £15 computer solve the programming gap?". BBC Click. Retrieved 2011-07-02. "video report"
  7. ^ Bush, Steve (2011-05-25). "Dongle computer lets kids discover programming on a TV". Electronics Weekly. Retrieved 2011-07-11. "Announced by UK games developer David Braben, the device can run Linux and is intended to be a low-cost (£15) way to introduce children to computer science."
  8. ^ "1129409 - Raspberry Pi Foundation". Charity Commission for England and Wales. 2011-06-06. "The object of the charity is to further the advancement of education of adults and children, particularly in the field of computers, computer science and related subjects."
  9. ^ "Raspberry Pi Foundation". Raspberry Pi Foundation. Retrieved 2011-07-02.
  10. ^ Bush, Steve (2011-05-26). "In depth: Raspberry Pi, the computer on a stick". Electronics Weekly. Retrieved 2011-07-11. "The Raspberry Pi developers and trustees of its Foundation are: David Braben - Founder of games software firm Frontier Developments and co-author of 'Elite'. Jack Lang - Business angel, early Acorn employee, founder of Cambridge start-ups. Pete Lomas - Founder and MD of Norcott Technologies. Robert Mullins - University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and St. John's College, Cambridge. Alan Mycroft - Professor of Computing in University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory Eben Upton - Engineer at Broadcom Europe, founder of software start-ups, and former director of computer science at St. John's College, Cambridge."
  11. ^ "CFL Podcast: Eben Upton (Raspberry Pi Foundation)". Consortium of Foundation Libraries. Retrieved 2011-06-06.
  12. ^ a b c Upton, Eben (July 26, 2011). "FAQs". Raspberry Pi. Retrieved December 12, 2011. "We’ll be supporting at least C, Perl and Python."
  13. ^ a b Upton, Liz (August 29, 2011). "FAQs". Raspberry Pi. Retrieved December 12, 2011. "The teaching language we’ll be promoting most heavily is Python, but really, the world’s your oyster [...]"
  14. ^ "David Braben on Raspberry Pi". Edge. November 25, 2011. Retrieved December 08, 2011. "Well, we have BBC Basic. [...] it's theBBC Basic. We're just checking where we are with the rights to that. There may or may not be an issue with the magic three letters there. [...] So it'll feel like the speed of Assembler, it'll run like the wind. [...] You could write something in Basic doing fancy graphics processing but where you could look at it and it's really obvious what it's doing. That's great from a teaching point of view, and from a fun point of view."
  15. ^ a b Wong, George (October 24, 2011). "Build your own prototype Raspberry Pi minicomputer". ubergizmo. Retrieved November 02, 2011. "From an Atmel ATmega644 microcontroller that ran at 22.1MHz with 512K of SRAM that’s now been replaced by a 700MHz ARM11 processor and 128/256MB of SDRAM [...] they’ve also decided to share the schematics and PCB layout of the 2006 Raspberry Pi computer."
  16. ^ Humphries, Matthew (2011-07-28). "Raspberry Pi $25 PC goes into alpha production". Geek.com. Retrieved 2011-08-01.
  17. ^ "Raspberry Pi Youtube Channel". Retrieved 2011-08-28.
  18. ^ "Full HD video demo at TransferSummit Oxford". Retrieved 2011-09-12.
  19. ^ Populated boards: an update on where we are (Raspberry Pi Blog)
  20. ^ More on the beta boards (Raspberry Pi Blog)
  21. ^ Bringing up a beta board (Raspberry Pi Blog)
  22. ^ XBMC Live USB Persistent (Raspberry Pi Forum)
  23. ^ This is probobly going to be the best HTPC when its released!(XBMC Forum)
  24. ^ Humphries, Matthew. "Raspberry Pi selects a very clever logo". geek.com. Retrieved October 11, 2011. "[...] Raspberry Pi needed a logo, and decided to turn to the community to come up with ideas. [...] 6 designs made the shortlist, and it took several days for the judges to finally decide on the winner. [...] It was created by Paul Beech [...] the raspberry is a 3D buckyball [...]"
  25. ^ Lee, Jeffrey. "Newsround". The Icon Bar. Retrieved October 17, 2011. "Veteran developer Adrian Lees has expressed an interest in porting RISC OS to the low-cost Raspberry Pi computer. Previously the possibility of a port was put into doubt by the question of whether anyone would have access to the required hardware documentation, but since Adrian works at Broadcom alongside Raspberry Pi Foundation members it sounds like lack of documentation will be the least of his issues."
  26. ^ a b "Q&A with our hardware team". Raspberry Pi Foundation. Retrieved 2011-09-20.
  27. ^ Final PCB artwork
  28. ^ Williams, Chris (28th November 2011). "Psst, kid... Wanna learn how to hack?". The Register. Retrieved 24th December 2011. "The RaspberryPi Model A and Model B (a reference to the BBC Micro) are expected to go on sale in December..."

[edit]External links

Official Website
Technical Information
In The News

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