The Raspberry Pi 5 is the latest in a series of easy-to-build single-board computers (SBCs). It launched in late 2023 at a slightly higher price than the Pi 4, which understandably upset some people. Now, less than a year after its initial launch, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has released a cheaper version.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is now available with 2GB of RAM for $50. Previously, the 4GB model was the cheapest at $60 and there is also the 8GB model for $80. Having less RAM makes this variant cheaper, but that's not all.
Broadcom didn't design the BCM2712 chipset specifically for Raspberry Pi; it also sells it to other companies. This means that the silicon has features that those other companies need, but the Pi doesn't. Still, those features take up space on the silicon die, driving up the price.
Broadcom has now come up with a new stepping (D0), which removes these extra bits, making the chipset a bit cheaper. This, combined with the lower amount of RAM, has allowed Broadcom to offer the 2GB model at $50. It remains to be seen whether the 4GB and 8GB models will switch to the new stepping (current cards use C1 stepping).
The BCM2712 is a 16nm chip with four Cortex-A76 cores (normally running at 2.4GHz) and a VideoCore VII GPU, along with other elements like a PCIe 2.0 x1 bus, which enabled more advanced applications for the Pi 5 – for example, if you build a NAS with it, the storage no longer needs to be connected to the USB 3.0 port.
🚨 A new member joins the Raspberry Pi 5 family 🚨
With 2GB of RAM and a price of just $50, this new entry-level product continues our mission to reduce the cost of high-performance general-purpose computing.
Read me: https://t.co/2WAJIC9Qh2 pic.twitter.com/lVDHpWXsZv
— Raspberry Pi (@Raspberry_Pi) August 19, 2024
In addition to the BCM2712, the Pi 5 also has an RP1 chip, developed by Raspberry itself and which enables features that make the Pi a Pi, for example the 40-pin header. The RP1 is also responsible for Ethernet, USB, display and camera ports, etc.
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