Raspberry Pi supply chain loosens just in time for the holiday season

Raspberry Pi enthusiasts, rejoice: around 100,000 RPi Zero W, 3A+, and 2GB/4GB RPi 4s are being distributed to resellers for holiday season consumer sales. Commercial and industrial customers, on the other hand, are being warned that substantial backlogs remain, and likely will through 2023. "Happy Christmas," Raspberry Pi …

[elsergiovolador]

Whales

The mini-computer maker's advice from earlier in the year still applies: only buy from authorized resellers to prevent shortages

That's a bit patronising and insensitive. If someone needs PI for their business, they are not going to wait for when it mysteriously shows up at an authorised reseller.

Contrary to people looking down from their ivory towers, people actually have work to do, rather than spending 24h looking at rpilocator.

RPi company "will continue to actively manage our commercial and industrial customers through 2023,"

It's funny how big corporations could easily afford to spin up their own RPi equivalent, but if they buy RPi, they kill two birds with one stone - they prevent their potential competition from growing, because small business can't access RPi and at the same time they save money on R&D.

Does this align with the spirit of RPi?

I think they should ban big industrial customers from purchasing the product. If there is such a big shortage on the market, that shouldn't reduce profit, so why not?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Whales

The risk of going outside the channel is that you don't get the real product.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Whales

This is unfortunately the cost of operating a small business. There is plenty of unscrupulous traders preying on the fact that already struggling business will not have money to do anything if they receive fakes and that the police will also do nothing.

There is also the problem of marketplaces giving fraudsters a platform, making money on sales commissions without fear of being shut down, because they become too big to fall so they can really operate outside of the legal system designed to keep us mere mortals in check.

That being said, you can look at it as a form of tax or cost of finding reliable supplier - you have to order from a lot of sellers until you establish trusted ones.

This is another space where government failed to establish a level playing field between big corporations and SMEs.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Whales

That's no way to run a railroad!

In this case, it's the Raspberry Pi Foundation that is the "small business" and Broadcom the "unscrupulous" supplier. The RPi was designed for hobbyists but became popular with industry because, despite its many limitations, it was a fantastic device for prototyping. But it would be a mistake to build a business around this without supply guarantees. This also essentially precludes buying from the grey market, especially when the manufacturer advises against it.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: Whales

Most industrial customers are actually pretty small businesses (a few hundred a year). We actively try and ensure they do get product to survive, email [e-mail] with your use case.

[iron]

And the 8 GB model I've been waiting for?

I've been waiting over 8 months for them to get 8 GB models in stock, sounds like it will be another year before I'll not bother buying one because I'll have come up with another solution for my needs.

Meanwhile they have been delivered to big customers. So much for the Foundation's goals for education and research.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: And the 8 GB model I've been waiting for?

Big customers rarely use the 8GB model. Having that much memory is a waste for most industrial/commercial applications. Outside of industrial, most people find the 4GB model perfectly suitable for the vast majority of tasks.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: And the 8 GB model I've been waiting for?

Couldn't agree more. What the new models do bring is greater bandwidth across peripherals.

[Anonymous Coward]

A year ago I ordered a Raspberry Pi 3 B from RS, they said Jan 22 delivery. Now I have had an email saying basically to look at something else called ROCK as they still can't get them. In the intervening year my RS account has been closed and company dissolved (unrelated to the lack of Pi) so looks like I will never see it!

[NewModelArmy]

Do you mean that RS has closed your account and your company has closed - as RS are still in operation.

RS were a licensed manufacturer and seller of the RPi, but lost that license this year (June 2022).

[Anonymous Coward]

What about Compute Module

I've been trying to get hold of a couple to do some dev of a new product I'm thinking of making and I haven't been able to find one anywhere. (Since I retired recently I've now got time to devote to my hobby business, but can't get hold of even one.

[David 132]

Re: What about Compute Module

) <- “and I forget to close my parentheses, which causes readers with OCD to twitch.”

[Gene Cash]

Hm.

I got 3 3B+ from Mouser fairly quickly (2mos when they were quoting 6mos wait)

[Anonymous Coward]

> Upton said he's confident supplies will recover to pre-pandemic levels in the second quarter of 2023, and by the second half of the year will be "unlimited."

I hope he is right but I do not share his confidence. Even if supplies do return to their pre-pandemic levels there is still the accrued backlog to address.

[Wcool]

Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

RP4 is getting a bit long in the tooth after 2 1/2 years

RK3588 is out since a few weeks and considerably faster for about the same price.

[doublelayer]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

Raspberry Pi isn't going to adopt RK3588 just because it's faster and more efficient. Among other things, they want images to be compatible with every board, which is easier when using basically the same architecture and is not compatible with a SoC whose boot process is so different. Also, they've probably got a good relationship with Broadcom given that every board has had a Broadcom CPU and GPU on it. Abandoning that in favor of a competitor is not likely. It's also worth keeping in mind that the Pi has never aimed for the fastest chip out there and has frequently lagged other companies on raw performance. I don't know when the next Pi comes out although I wouldn't expect it to be soon given the production difficulties, but it's not likely to give you every feature you want.

If you want the RK3588, there are several companies who build SBCs around it, some explicitly designed to be similar in size and peripherals to the Pi. You can have those now and many have more availability. Don't hold your breath for the Pi 5 being announced when you want it or having every feature you think it should.

[Wcool]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

I think you misunderstood me, I don't expect Pi Foundation to design a chip around the Rockwell 3588, just that the Raspberry PI seems to have a lot more competition these days for the same pricepoint as the Pi 4.

Not long ago they had the best SOC for the money. If they stay with Broadcom, I'm not aware of a good successor designed by Broadcom.

(Is that relation really that good btw? Why didn't Broadcom toss them a couple more chips considering how much goodwill and business Broadcom gets from Raspberry?)

I tried to sketch that Pi 4 will not long be the best SOC to buy even now it becomes avaliable again and for Raspberry Foundations sake I hoped they had a new design.

[doublelayer]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

"Not long ago they had the best SOC for the money."

I'm not convinced about that. There have been more powerful chips used on SBCs for as long as it was obvious that people wanted to buy Raspberry Pis. I'm not sure how you decide what performance and price intersection is right, but their competition offered faster chips at all points. Until the Pi 4, their chips were pretty uncompetitive. Even when that was new, depending on workload, they were still uncompetitive (for example, RasPi's SoCs have always omitted encryption acceleration, but nearly everyone else's products support it). They have been more consistent about being inexpensive and easy to buy (supply chains excepted, but lots of local distributors and not having to pay half the price in shipping that takes a month).

Raspberry Pi has never really tried to be the fastest board out there, and it's served them well. I wouldn't expect them to change that just because some new boards show much better benchmark numbers. They can correctly point out that those boards tend to cost more and use more power than theirs, that the software landscape for them is more chaotic than the Pi's, and that they don't need to change their design in order to consistently sell out of the models they do make. I don't think they're aiming for the perfect board, so their next version is unlikely to meet all your or my expectations. Fortunately, we do have multiple other options to consider. My last SBC purchase three years ago wasn't a Raspberry Pi, but it still works.

[werdsmith]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

If you were to look at the Wishlist features that people have suggested for a future Pi SBC, the RK3588 seems to have it all covered. It's not just about performance. For example, up to 32GB RAM, eMMC 5.1, SDIO, SATA 3.0, 4-lane PCIe 3.0, and 3x PCIe 2.0. All stuff that Raspberry Pi people keep patting us on the head and telling us we don't need. We shall see.

It really is the software and "ecosystem" support that has sustained a lead for Raspberry Pi. The fact that they have a stable OS and they have invested time in slowly and incrementing the optimisations to drivers and linux support for their hardware. This seems to be the difference in approach.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

I wouldn't expect anything else from a wishlist. But, as you note, the RPi provides an ecosystem that means you can just plug them into existing projects and that provides an awful lot of value.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

Also, they've probably got a good relationship with Broadcom given that every board has had a Broadcom CPU and GPU on it.

It's funny that when a big corporation is providing the service to the same company year after year, nobody says they should really become one company.

But when a small business is providing service to a big company year after year suddenly there is IR35 brigade showing up. Can't do that!

I wonder how RPi would have looked like today, or if it even existed if they were subject to the same red tape and regime as small businesses are.

[doublelayer]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

I'm neither an expert on tax law nor work in the UK, but I'll point out that there is a legal difference between "provide service" (grey area), "work for" (what IR35 is ostensibly meant to deal with), and "sell goods to" (the situation between Broadcom and Raspberry Pi). I've heard enough to think that IR35 is wrong a lot, but the comparison you're making is still invalid.

[elsergiovolador]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

You are really arguing semantics here.

[doublelayer]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

Yes, I am. The kind of semantics that are critical in tax and employment law. Whether someone is a contractor is a tricky issue that has caused problems in many countries. There are incentives for the company making the profit from the work, the worker and any instruments they've created, and the tax authorities to classify people as a contractor or an employee, and such incentives are often very confusing. It's how you can get two people doing the same thing under basically identical circumstances, one of whom insists they must be regarded as an employee while the other insists on being regarded as a contractor, and that's only the first of many disagreements. Complicated issue, that. Selling a physical item that's not even restricted (if I buy a bunch of BCM2711s from Broadcom, they'll be the same as what the Raspberry Pi people have) is a lot less complicated from all perspectives, and hence a comparison between them fails to make any point.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

Agreed.

What I find most useful is the support network around the Raspberry Pi, the price point, reliability, efficient use of power and getting the jobs I need done. And it works wonderfully!

The Raspberry Pi 4B does everything I need brilliantly, but if a new version does come out, I hope it continues with the same price brackets and perhaps work more efficiently in terms of power consumption. Also less heat emissions from the CPU would be brilliant.

The main selling point was that USB and the ethernet interfaces do not rob resources from each other, ethernet works better than the previous iteration.

At this point, and I know I'm just speaking for myself here, I definitely am not interested in more processing power, more power consumption, higher prices and more memory than I need. I'm in no rush for a Raspberry Pi 5 as long as these boards are still doing the job for me. I think the best things come to those who wait, and I am sure when RPL are ready to launch a new version, they will, with features that will even compel me enough to purchase those instead of the 4B in future!

There are other SBCs out there if people today need more processing power and memory and don't care so much for the power consumption, support, reliability etc.

Horses for courses as they say.

[nonamesleft]

Re: Would have preferred Pi 5 announcement

Same, but sadly it doesn't look like it will happen. I've already moved on to the Rock 4 which has been a solid replacement. I haven't tried thte 5 yet but would be interested to hear if anyone has

[Kenny Millar]

A drop in the ocean

100,000 Units won't make the slightest differnce to availability.

It's just more lies and spin from a company that has recognise that there is more money to be made from the commercial sector than individuals.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: A drop in the ocean

What's worse is they are obviously part of an international conspiracy to stop businesses getting chips.

We're frantically respining boards cos NXP seem to have stopped shipping anything. We've finished designs on hold because we can't be sure of an FPGA availability.

We aren't quite buying washing machines to strip for chips (allegedly Porsche are) but we have engineers buying individual dev-kits to get a certain special chip.

[James Hughes 1]

Re: A drop in the ocean

How so? Raspberry Pi charge the same for devices whether individual or industrial. The reasons for prioritising industrial are not money related, as has been stated elsewhere.

[Charlie Clark]

Re: A drop in the ocean

For the supply chain problems: blame global supply chains and just in time manufacturing for reducing the number of suppliers and then cancelling orders early in the pandemic.

[VeNT]

Just in time for the holidays.

What year.