Raspberry Pi 4 Launched: Quad Cortex-A72 Single-Board Computer For $35
by Ryan Smith on June 24, 2019 7:15 PM EST- Posted in
- Raspberry Pi
- Cortex A72
- Pi
This morning the Raspberry Pi Foundation took the wraps off of their next generation hobbyist project computer, the Raspberry Pi 4. The eagerly anticipated update to the Raspberry Pi lineup – which is actually arriving a bit ahead of schedule due to some good fortunes in SoC development – offers a significant upgrade to the family thanks to its new 28nm Broadcom SoC, which among other things incorporates a more powerful quad Arm Cortex-A72 CPU cluster. The single-board computer is available now, and like its predecessors, prices start at $35.
Long a favorite for tinkers, makers, and anyone else looking for a project board or a simple computer, the Raspberry Pi family has been around since 2012. Its last full update was in 2016, when the Foundation released the Raspberry Pi 3. In the intervening three years the technology landscape has changed a fair bit, and so has the underlying hardware of the Pi. While still based on Broadcom SoCs, the new Pi incorporates Broadcom’s BCM2711, a 28nm SoC with a quad Cortex-A72 setup along with the company’s VideoCore VI GPU. While the GPU remains nothing to write home about – the Raspberry Pi Foundation prioritizes an open GPU first and foremost – the CPU upgrade is far more interesting. This update replaces the old Cortex-A53 CPU cores with cores from Arm’s much faster high-performance line of out-of-order execution cores. As a result, even with a clockspeed of just 1.5GHz, the Pi 4 is a good deal faster than the Pi 3, not to mention faster than even some mid-range smartphones.
| Raspberry Pi | ||
| Raspberry Pi 4 | ||
| SoC | Broadcom BCM2711 4x Cortex-A72 @ 1.5GHz VideoCore VI @ 500Mhz |
|
| DRAM | 1/2/4GB LPDDR4 | |
| Storage | microSD | |
| Networking | 1x Gigabit Ethernet 802.11ac BT 5.0 |
|
| USB | 2x USB-A 3.0 2x USB-A 2.0 |
|
| Video Output | 2x HDMI 2.0 Type-D | |
| GPIO | 17 Pins | |
| Power | USB-C (Suggested: 15W, 5.1V/3A) | |
| Dimensions | 85.6mm x 56.5mm x 17mm | |
| Price | 1GB: $35 2GB: $45 4GB: $55 |
|
I/O has also received a much-needed upgrade for the latest Pi. The new SoC brings with it USB 3 support, giving the platform access to SuperSpeed USB data rates for the first time. HDMI support has been similarly bumped to 2.0 (meaning 4K output support), and fittingly, the board can now decode H.264 and H.265 video (another first) at resolutions up to 4K. Networking performance has been upgraded as well with the addition of a full-speed Gigabit Ethernet port, and joining the 802.11ac radio is support for Bluetooth 5.0.
All told, the Foundation is selling 3 different versions of the Raspberry Pi 4, depending on the memory configuration. The $35 model comes with 1GB of LPDDR4, while 2GB and 4GB models are available for $45 and $55 respectively. Which in the case of the latter two models is a significant shot in the arm for the board, as now they have two to four times the memory to play with.
Meanwhile, our sister site Tom’s Hardware already has an early review out, confirming much of what you’d expect from the Raspberry Pi 4 based on the specifications. CPU, memory, and storage performance are all greatly improved over past models, though power consumption has gone up a bit in the process.
Source: Raspberry Pi Foundation
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mode_13h - Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - link
Even if it's hampered by a bad driver (and I believe VC6 uses a different driver than VC4), it still sounds like compute performance isn't much about 100 GFLOPS, which is a factor of 5 below what upper-end mobile SoCs manage.Also, I think the DDR4L data width is probably rather narrow. So, let's hope VC6 has some decent amount of cache and does tiled rendering.
Samus - Wednesday, June 26, 2019 - link
The advantage of 28nm is totally gonna be the maturity of the node and overclocking potential. With an active cooler this thing will likely hit 2.0+GHz with an optimized schedulereastcoast_pete - Monday, June 24, 2019 - link
The Pi4 is a significant step up from the Pi3, and while onboard storage is limited to microSD (however, notably faster than before), the Pi4 has real USB 3, and can be run from an external SSD. The biggest reason for me to wait right now is the lack of good ways to play video. Once I can run Kodi or similar on it, I'm in. Last, but not least, the Raspberry Foundation delivered the Pi4 on spec and ahead of schedule - nice.mode_13h - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - link
Yeah, it's nearly a month until Euro Pi day! What gives?vice350z - Monday, June 24, 2019 - link
is it even worth sending back the Pi 3B+ i just got to run RetroPie and more graphically intense roms?Beany2013 - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - link
Not right now, because lots of Retroarch isn't set up for the A72/RPi4 hardware yet.And when it is ready, a new one is only $30-60 - a few takeaway meals.
I've got an RPi3 that I'm keeping for retro gaming, but I might be tempted to get an RPI4 with 4gb of RAM - or maybe a couple, over a couple of months, to test out Docker and other 'current' stack setups that I can't really test at work at the moment due to a huuuuuuge legacy stack I work with.
HStewart - Monday, June 24, 2019 - link
Well I purchase 2 Raspberry PI want to help out some Autism Youth. But I found that it was a challenge making it work -it not for average person, but it is a good tech project for people interested in electronics. Right now the Pi's are in container with others similar devices like Adreno's, I don't expect that these will be widespread just because of there nature. Somebody smart could create a kid am as smart home video machine with software fully loaded and tested similar to Android boxesZingam - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - link
What is the situation with the graphics stack? Does it support in hardware Vulkan 1.1, OpenGL ES 3.2, OpenCL, etc all the things that matter?Zingam - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - link
And AV1 decode?nevcairiel - Tuesday, June 25, 2019 - link
Its Broadcom VideoCore still, so no, its still useless.