The Raspberry Pi Foundation extends its Pi 5 concept to the Compute Model range.
The news won't come as a surprise to brand regulars, who have in fact been waiting for this announcement for several months already, but while we've just been talking about the "infinitely large" with Tencent's 3D One handheld console project, we're now talking about the "infinitely small" with the latest announcement from the Raspberry Pi Foundation. This follows on logically from last year's launch of the Raspberry Pi 5, a single-board nanocomputer that increased the performance of the Pi 4 model launched five years ago.
Raspberry Pi
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has now officially launched the Compute Model 5. Essentially identical to the Raspberry Pi 5, the Compute Model 5 is powered by a 16-nanometer Broadcom BCM2712 chip, replacing the 28-nanometer Broadcom BCM2711 of the Raspberry Pi 4... and Compute Model 4. Like its predecessor, the new chip features 4 cores, but Cortex A-76 cores instead of the Pi 4's Cortex-A72. Among other improvements, it boasts a combined cache memory of 4 MB instead of 1 MB, and a vastly improved frequency of 2.4 GHz instead of 1.8 GHz.
An insane amount of power considering the size of a Compute Model 5, which happens to be a tiny motherboard measuring just 55 x 40 x 4.7 millimetres! And yet, the Raspberry Pi Foundation integrates up to 8 GB of RAM (choice of 2, 4 or 8 GB) and an eMMC storage chip of up to 64 GB, plus a component dedicated to wireless networks (WiFi/Bluetooth). As with previous Compute Models, there are no miracles here, however, and the Foundation has been forced to remove all conventional connectors, leaving just the 40-pin GPIO port - on the back of the board - which enables numerous extensions to be added.
Raspberry Pi
That's the whole point of the Compute Model 5, by the way: to bend to the needs of a wide range of users, who can then adapt it to the scenarios they envisage. To this end, the Raspberry Pi Foundation offers an IO Board that connects to the Compute Model 5's GPIO, as well as an IO Case to house the entire system. However, as with the Compute Model 4, many third-party solutions will soon be available, and it's interesting to note that some of the extensions designed for the Compute Model 4 work with the 5. The 5 will be a little more expensive than its predecessor, although prices in euros are still unknown: we're talking between $45 and $95, depending on the configuration chosen, wireless network, amount of RAM and eMMC storage space.
