Posts by James Hughes 1

@AC 2

Really not sure what you are getting at. Please explain.

Bollocks

I can guarantee they will be sold, either end of Jan or start of Feb 2012 at the prices advertised - that is $25 for the model A and $35 for the model B, plus local taxes and shipping.

You appear to be the one without an ounce of sense. Why do you think this against EVERY SINGLE piece of evidence to the contrary?

You are going to look like a right twat as well, no wonder you posted AC.

Really? You produced a very cheap PC for helping people learn to program and tried to get it in to schools? What was it called?

The SoC on the Pi can drop down to <10mA depending on what you are doing with it. The GPU has very aggressive power management which turns off anything not being used (automatic - not reliant on the host OS). But in general use it is going to use more power than an Arduino, But then it would do decoding 10780p30 H264.

I'm been running Debian with LXDE on my Raspberry Pi Alpha board no problems -works just like any other Linux PC - bit slower at 700Mhz, but very usable.

As to amazing, if its so 'unamazing', why hasn't there been one before?

Correct, $25 is approximately £16. Dollar prices as that's what the components are sourced in, soc the foundation doesn't get shafted by the exchange rate.

Model B WILL be $35 (plus any tax e.g. VAT, plus shipping). You'll need to buy a power supply, but you probably already have one (USB), perhaps a USB keyboard and mouse if not got one already. Still comes in much less than £50.

But not for $25 and $35 which is what they will sell for when in full production - the prices on Ebay are collectors level prices, not for people actually wanting to use them.

You are going to look a right twat for that comment at the end of January. $25 and $35 are the price points -t he people running the foundation are NOT beginners at this stuff, and know exactly what they are doing.

I've been wondering about OpenCL, but it's a big task to implement it. Some work being done to give access to some GPU capabilities, but OpenCL is just too big.

In order for Broadcom to do the work (and they are the only people who could - the GPU needs specialist knowledge and compilers which are not available outside the Cambridge office), there would need to be some profit motive, and there doesn't appear to be one at the moment.

@Asbokid

Couple of corrections to your post.

Eben is NOT an executive at Broadcom.

The Foundation as far as I know hasn't closed any threads on their forum without discussion. I think one was closed because it was degenerating in to a round the houses repeating thread, as often happens with these OSS arguments. They have welcomed comments, and put forward counterarguments. To me it seems that the more militaristic OSS advocates are entirely unable to acept even an iotas difference from their strict worldview - taking on for example, a bit of pragmatism.

Broadcom have donated time and money to this project, to no real gain (they are not selling enough chips to Raspberry Pi to make back the money). If they make a few quid on the back of Chinese sales, where is the problem? After all, they are a publicly listed company that needs to pay its employees.

@Jake

Over 99% of internet traffic will end up going through a Broadcom chip somewhere between you consumer device and the remote server..

Let's hope you are in that 1% eh!

@ManuT

The Nokia N8 can do 720p encode because it uses a Videocore 3 GPU - the predecessor to the Videocore 4 GPU in the Raspberry Pi.

Small world eh!

Not a shell company..

Raspberry Pi is an independent charity, that is using Broadcom chip. They use the Broadcom chip because Eben knows its capabilities and the foundation gets a discount.

The Raspberry Pi is sold at just over cost, making just enough cash to run the foundation.

You can say that with certainty? How? The Model A is $25 to everyone, the Model B is $35. You will have to pay P&P and applicable taxes on that, depending on your location.

So explain again, how can you be so sure you won't be able to get it for the headline price?

You can do both!

It's a linux box, you can load any number of language compilers on to it. QT works, GTK etc. C/C++, Python, Lua, and any number of other languages available for Linux. (See the Wiki)

I doubt more than 1% of people buying the board will be interested in the HW access side of things. And perhaps some of the rest will eventually go bit lower.

My plan it to take over the eldest's BigTrac. 16 steps just ain't enough, I want wireless control and on board video streamed back to the PC. Bwahhhahahahahahah

Videocore IV supports H264 High profile 1080p30, along with MP4. However, those codecs that need an expensive licence won't be suppled. Don't blame the Raspberry Pi, blame the licence cost. Interestingly AAC is the highest codec cost of the lot, and yet is the simplest format.

There are two chips on the Model B board - the SoC and a LAN chip. The LAN chip is multi purpose and takes the SoC single USB and converts it to ethernet, and also provides a two port hub.

This is a pretty cheap option - higher hub count and the required connectors increases the board price quite surprisingly - you need the bigger 4 port USB socket, the hub chip, and the board space on which to mount them - space is money. All together they put the price up by over 10%.

And there is absolutely no reason why you cannot do this- perhaps to Python, or even BBC basic. It's just a SD cd swap to change the nature of the beast.

$ Price

Its because all the parts are sourced in dollars, so pricing the part in $'s means no issues with exchange rate buggering your margins.

Way to miss the point

In school they are NOT ALLOWED to program the machine in case they bugger them up. They are an expensive resource that need to be maintained.

This device give them the ability to bugger it up to their hearts content. You just need to re-image the SD card and you are back to square one. No IT support needed. And even if you somehow break the hardware - its $35 so not going to break the bank.

You are right - it is just another Linux board. But it's CHEAP and therefore more accessible. But because its JALB (c) it can run almost any language you want for free. Unlike all those school computers running Windows. And there is the software angle. Yes, its all down to the software, but you need a device to write software on, and this is a good one.

And I think you are wrong about the market for low level coding skills declining. We are constantly needing low level coders, and there simply are not enough good ones. There is a constant demand for software for low level devices as so much stuff has some sort of SW requirement nowadays. There is also the fact that a good low level coder is generally better at high level coding and debugging because they have a better understanding of how the device works under the skin. A low level coder can work at the high level. Not the other way round.

And yet you already use Broadcom product everyday. In your iPhone, HTC, Nokia, in your laptop, your desktop, in your router, in the switches used on the internet backbone.

If you don't want to use their product, don't use the internet.

@Stephen 2

Er, you are talking bollocks.

Release date has always been Q4 2011- so not sure why you are saying 'STILL' not available bearing in mind it's 'STILL' Q4 2011.

And the price point stands.