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The tech world is buzzing with the announcement of the Raspberry Pi 5, set to hit the market at the end of October. This new model, priced at $60 for the 4GB variant and $80 for the 8GB version, is a significant upgrade from its predecessor, offering enhanced features and over twice the speed. Notably, it’s the first Raspberry Pi computer to feature silicon designed in-house in Cambridge, UK.
Raspberry Pi 5 Specs
The Raspberry Pi 5 boasts a 2.4GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU, a VideoCore VII GPU that supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2, and dual 4Kp60 HDMI display output. It also includes a 4Kp60 HEVC decoder, dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 5.0 / Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), and a high-speed microSD card interface with SDR104 mode support.
Other features include 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet with PoE+ support, 2 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers, a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals, and a Raspberry Pi standard 40-pin GPIO header.
Pre-Orders
It also includes a real-time clock and a power button. In a departure from recent tradition, Raspberry Pi 5 is being announced before it arrives on shelves. Pre-orders are available now from many approved reseller partners, with the first units expected to ship by the end of October.
The Raspberry Pi team is immensely grateful to the community of makers and hackers who have been patient throughout the supply chain issues that have made their work challenging over the last couple of years. To thank the community, all Raspberry Pi 5s sold until the end of the year will be ringfenced for single-unit sales to individuals.
Print subscribers to The MagPi and HackSpace magazines will receive a single-use code, giving them priority access to Raspberry Pi 5 hardware.
The Pi 5 is the result of years of development. The Raspberry Pi 4, launched in June 2019, was the first true PC-class Raspberry Pi computer. With a quad-core Arm Cortex-A72 processor clocked at 1.5GHz, it was roughly forty times faster than the original Raspberry Pi model from 2012. Since then, the Raspberry Pi 4 and its derivatives, the Raspberry Pi 400 and Compute Module 4, have become firm favorites of enthusiasts, educators, and professional design engineers worldwide.
Performance
Despite the challenges that have affected the electronics supply chain over the last two years, over 14 million units of Raspberry Pi 4 have been sold. The Raspberry Pi 5 represents a significant leap forward in performance. Compared to the Raspberry Pi 4, it offers between two and three times the CPU and GPU performance, roughly twice the memory and I/O bandwidth, and for the first time, Raspberry Pi silicon on a flagship Raspberry Pi device.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is built on a disaggregated chiplet architecture, with the major fast digital functions, the SD card interface, and the very fastest interfaces provided by the AP. All other I/O functions are offloaded to a separate I/O controller, implemented on an older, cheaper process node, and connected to the AP via PCI Express.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is built at the Sony UK Technology Centre in Pencoed, South Wales. The team believes in the benefits of manufacturing their products within a few hours’ drive of their engineering design center in Cambridge.
The Raspberry Pi 5 introduces a number of manufacturing innovations, including intrusive reflow for connectors, fully routed panel singulation for cleaner board edges, and a new approach to production test inspired by their experiences testing their RP2040 microcontroller at scale.
The Raspberry Pi 5 will be accompanied by new accessories, including an updated case, an Active Cooler, a 27W USB-C Power Supply, camera and display cables, a PoE+ HAT, M.2 HATs, and a RTC battery.
In parallel with the final stages of the Raspberry Pi 5 program, the software team has been developing a new version of Raspberry Pi OS, the official first-party operating system for Raspberry Pi devices. This is based on the most recent release of Debian (and its derivative Raspbian), codenamed “Bookworm,” and incorporates numerous enhancements, notably the transition from X11 to the Wayfire Wayland compositor on Raspberry Pi 4 and 5.
The Raspberry Pi 5 is the result of a seven-year, $25 million endeavor, involving tens of organizations and hundreds of individuals. It represents a significant step forward in the Raspberry Pi journey, offering enhanced features and performance to the global community of makers, hackers, enthusiasts, educators, and professional design engineers.
About the Author / Author Expertise
John Biggs is an entrepreneur, consultant, writer, and maker. He spent fifteen years as an editor for Gizmodo, CrunchGear, and TechCrunch and has a deep background in hardware startups, 3D printing, and blockchain. His work has appeared in Men’s Health, Wired, and the New York Times.
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