Last year the Raspberry Pi foundation announced an iteration to their Raspberry Pi 3 platform with a faster processor clockspeed and faster wireless. Here in 2019 there’s a new version of their popular hobbyist computer, the Raspberry Pi 4 has different ports, a faster processor and more memory. A blog post from Eben Upton has more details.
The Pi 4 doesn’t look to be 100% case-compatible with the Pi 3, but you might be able to work around that with a little bit of sanding. The Pi 4 now uses USB-C for power, but still has two Type-A USB 2 ports with the addition of two Type-A USB 3 ports.
Maybe the most important part of this Raspberry Pi 4 is the foundation’s claim of something closer to desktop computing performance. The single HDMI port has been replaced with two micro HDMI ports that the foundation says can support 4K resolutions. For the first time, there are price tiers based on the system’s memory, a 1GB Pi 4 is still $35, and then the 2GB model is $45, and the 4GB top-end model is $55. They’re even bundling their own keyboard & mouse and beginner’s guide with the 4GB Pi 4 for about $120, which doesn’t sound like that great a deal when it has just a 16GB SD card. I’ve seen competing kits with older Pi models around $200, but those more expensive kits also included a screen. The Pi 4 desktop kit leaves finding a 4K screen up to you.
Originally, the Pi Foundation had planned to release the Raspberry Pi 4 next year, but they’ve said the Broadcom ARM chip they use turned out to be ready earlier than expected:
In the past, we’ve indicated 2020 as a likely introduction date for Raspberry Pi 4. We budgeted time for four silicon revisions of BCM2711 (A0, B0, C0, and C1); in comparison, we ship BCM2835C2 (the fifth revision of that design) on Raspberry Pi 1 and Zero.
Fortunately, 2711B0 has turned out to be production-ready, which has taken roughly 9–12 months out of the schedule.
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