The latest version of the Raspberry Pi is about a year old, and an update was long overdue. The Raspberry Pi foundation has announced the next generation of Pi, Pi 4 B, that will provide a significant upgrade and will offer the choice of 1, 2, and 4 GB of memory.
The Pi 4 B is the very first product launch after the Raspberry Pi Store has been opened in Cambridge, UK. The Pi 4 B offers a stronger and more modern processor as opposed to its predecessors. This has been achieved by making a switch from 40nm silicon to 28 nm. The Pi 4 B comes with 1.5 GHz ARM Cortex-A72 quad-core brains that offer a performance increase of between two and four times when compared with Pi 3 B+.
Up to $ GB of RAM has been made available, but switching to LPDDR4 also implies enhanced bandwidth. USB connectivity has been upgraded as well, and the micro-B power port has been replaced with USB-C that offers an extra 500mA of current. The previous full-sized HDMI has been replaced with two micro-HDMI connections that can now cater to dual monitor setups. The supported resolution goes up to 4K at 60 frames per second for single display or 30 fps for dual monitor setup. The previous graphics driver stack has been taken over by Mesa V3D driver.
Raspberry Pi 4 B comes with Bluetooth 5.0 and 802.11ac dual-band Wi-Fi. The Gigabit Ethernet port has been shifted to the top right of the board while the 4-pin power-over-Ethernet controller has retained its position. The Foundation has stated that the makers using Pi 4 B will be able to enjoy full throughput thanks to the Ethernet controller being connected to an external Broadcom PHY via a dedicated interface.
The overall physical design has been carefully finalized, making sure that the latest Pi is compatible with legacy Pi products. The OS is based on Debian 10 Buster release and users can also look forward to a modern UI, the Chromium 74 web browser along with a ton of other technical improvements. The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B board is available at the following prices;
- $35 for 1GB RAM
- $45 for 2 GB RAM
- $55 for 4 GB RAM
The previous models of the Pi will be manufactured up until the demand drops off, and the pricing for the existing products will remain the same.