Raspberry Pi prices hiked as AI gobbles all the memory Raspberry Pi is upping the cost of some devices by double-digit percentages from today driven by what CEO Eben Upton calls "insatiable demand for high-bandwidth memory (HBM) for AI applications." Rainbow bright if you're short a nightlight (click to enlarge) – Pic: Richard Speed The sweetest slice of Pi: Raspberry Pi 500+ …
customers buying Raspberry Pi's now not-quite-so-cheap computers.
The Pi3B is still $35 before taxes, the low memory variants of the later Pis are still $40ish.
$35 was the 2012 price, it it had kept increasing with inflation the Pis would be $50-$55 now.
"customers buying Raspberry Pi's now even cheaper computers"
Aren't computers supposed to go down in price ?
Unlike graphing calculators or for the more nerdy
Raspberry Pi is no longer a Foundation - they are a profit making company that IPO'd last year.
A lot of their value is freeloading off the backs of open source developers who worked on Pi software.
You can get Pi clones and even Intel N100/N150 boxes for less with more performance.
The Pi shines in terms of software support and GPIO.
"A lot of their value is freeloading off the backs of open source developers who worked on Pi software."
Oh, look. They're freeloading off the backs of Microsoft developers too: https://raspberrytips.com/windows-11-on-raspberry-pi/
And what about Intel? All those of us running Linux on our PCs! And AMD, too, of course.
1. Raspberry Pi trading diverged from the Foundation 13 years ago and has been run as a profit centre ever since. The IPO made little difference to that.
2. Freeloading? Raspberry Pi contribute a lot back to the Linux kernel, libcamera, MESA etc. If you are going to accuse people of freeloading, at least start with those who do not contribute back. Which is probably every other SBC supplier.
3. You can indeed get cheaper devices. There is a reason they are cheaper. Cheap Chinese chips, no support, crap warranty, no continuation of supply for a start. It's a long list.
> Aren't computers supposed to go down in price ?
In general they should but once the price (and profit margin) drop below a given floor limit they stop making them to concentrate on the more profitable stuff
In the Pi's case it is the usual case of the demand outstripping supply cycle that has forced prices up, once AI crashes so will the price of components .
So boom and bust as normal
RPi's use a lot of proprietary software, that controls the hardware; `git clone https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware` and therefore controls the user.
There's "firmware gaslighting", to trick the user into thinking it's not software, but the proprietary license makes it quite clear that it's software; https://raw.githubusercontent.com/raspberrypi/firmware/refs/heads/master/boot/LICENCE.broadcom
There is multiple proprietary binaries, one of which is an OS that uses ThreadX that is loaded onto the GPU.
The user thinks the kernel, Linux is in control, but rather that proprietary master OS running on the GPU is in control (it has DMA) and the user can only ask to do many things.
There is the LibreRPi project, which replaces bootcode.bin and just doesn't use the GPU, but it's not yet usable, as it supports few models and USB, DMA and Ethernet do not work (power management doesn't work either, but you can do without that); `git clone https://github.com/christinaa/rpi-open-firmware/`
Pi's don't seem to use a vanilla configuration of the kernel, Linux.
Debian in is fact now a proprietary OS that serves the proprietary masters primarily and puts the users in 50th place.
Wow, so much wrong in this post.
The firmware blob on the Pi5 (and now earlier models as well) does very little. Nowadays, it's really just thermal control and boot, it's there to get the system up and running, and to make sure the SoC doesn't overheat. Most of what used to be in the firmware (you know, 12 years ago) is now all open source Arm side code (3D, codec, cameras, display etc). Pi have put a lot of effort into getting as much out of the firmware and open-sourced as possible.
Because most of what used to be in the firmware is now in the kernel or userspace, that means a lot of it could be upstreamed, and has been. So the vanilla Linux will work. There are a few areas where code has not been upstreamed - anyone who has tried to upstream, knows how much of a PITA it can be - but it is still all open source in the Pi Github repo. Once Linux is booted, Linux is in control of everything except the thermal stuff. This is a good thing and means if Linux (or its own thernal control) crashes, the firmware can still stop the device overheating.
Basically your comment is about 8 years out of date and your comment on Debian, is, well, a bit weird.
>The firmware blob on the Pi5 (and now earlier models as well) does very little.
There is not just one proprietary program - there are several.
As per README.md as I linked - there are several proprietary programs (or proprietary patches); start*.elf, fixup*.dat and bootcode.bin
cd boot ; ls -lah start*.elf fixup*.dat bootcode.bin | awk '{print $5 " " $9}'
52K bootcode.bin
3.2K fixup4cd.dat
5.4K fixup4.dat
8.3K fixup4db.dat
8.3K fixup4x.dat
3.2K fixup_cd.dat
7.2K fixup.dat
11K fixup_db.dat
11K fixup_x.dat
827K start4cd.elf
3.7M start4db.elf
2.2M start4.elf
3.0M start4x.elf
827K start_cd.elf
4.7M start_db.elf
2.9M start.elf
3.6M start_x.elf
There's even a few copies of a proprietary version of Linux there; kernel_2712.img, kernel7.img, kernel7l.img, kernel8.img, kernel8_rt.img, kernel.img and the proprietary software couldn't be anything but a derivative work of Linux (it doesn't boot or interface with anything else) and therefore intentional GPLv2 infringement is occurring (but of course the Linux developers are happy for the users freedom to be taken in that way).
~22MiB is quite a lot of proprietary software, which certainly doesn't do very little (although certain programs are only for certain Pi's).
4.7MiB of proprietary OS that uses threadx can do and does quite a lot; strings start*.elf |grep threadx
Apparently the RPi5 doesn't use that version of such software and instead the relevant version is included in the SPI flash instead - but I'd bet that the programs stored on the SPI flash are larger than the relevant files for the RPi4; https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=373222
>Nowadays, it's really just thermal control and boot, it's there to get the system up and running, and to make sure the SoC doesn't overheat.
A free version of u-boot could get the system init'd just fine - but Broadcom says no.
Thermal control can and must be done with free software.
>Most of what used to be in the firmware (you know, 12 years ago) is now all open source Arm side code (3D, codec, cameras, display etc)
"open source" misses the point.
"most" is not "all".
It doesn't seem "most" is correct - rather "little" seems more correct.
>Pi have put a lot of effort into getting as much out of the firmware and open-sourced as possible.
As far as I can tell, the RPi's have only gotten more proprietary, as for any function moved into a source-available driver, the size of the proprietary software has increased as well?
As the correct amount of proprietary software is 0 - it is totally unacceptable that RPi has increased the amount of proprietary software.
>This is a good thing and means if Linux (or its own thernal control) crashes, the firmware can still stop the device overheating.
Wow, proprietary software is a good thing?
Overheating protection must not only be implemented in any software if you don't want the hardware to fail from overheating - rather the hardware should contain a function that responds to overheating by throttling and triggers a reset if excessive overheating still occurs (AMD64 CPUs do that).
Such hardware safety feature means it doesn't matter if any of the thermal control software crashes or is bugged - as the device will just go and reset itself (which would automatically deal with the overheating, as crashed-on-a-loop software would stop running).
If overheating is a concern, clearly the device needs cooling fans and the free software fancontrol can handle PWM fans no problem.
>your comment on Debian, is, well, a bit weird.
It's not weird at all as Debian is proprietary software now - the installer contains proprietary software and goes and permanently installs it without asking the user or telling them what was installed!
use HBM memory - why would HBM memory going up 120% or manufacturers prioritizing HBM production have that much of an impact on the price of LPDDR4X or earlier memory that was already stocked too?
Looks like simply an excuse to charge more - or it was aliens.
For developers, not consumers, the early PIs were nice for starter to learn Linux I/o coding such as SPI I2C networking etc... or as a general purpose core for the many apps and products around, but the prices have gone up so steep for 4 and 5 that now just buying a hardware dev kit using Arm chip brands Is much better and cheaper do learn developing and especially customizing kernels.
