Raspberry Pi has just announced a new 2 GB variant of its Raspberry Pi 5 computer. The organization said that it has managed to make it available for $50, down from $60 which is what its next-lowest Raspberry Pi 5 costs. While 2 GB may sound a bit limiting in this day and age, Raspberry Pi OS is optimized to be extremely lightweight and will still work fine with 2 GB.
Cutting the memory was one way in which Raspberry Pi was able to cut the price of this computer but it also used a cost-optimized D0 stepping of the BCM2712 processor, a 16 nm application processor built by Broadcom.
Explaining what it did to reduce processor costs, Raspberry Pi CEO Eben Upton said:
"BCM2712C1 is a hugely complex and powerful device, with a quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 application processor running at 2.4GHz, and the latest iteration of the VideoCore multimedia platform. Alongside the features required to power a Raspberry Pi, it also contains functionality intended to serve other markets, which we don’t need. This ‘dark silicon’ is permanently disabled in the chips we use, but takes up die space, and therefore adds cost.
The new D0 stepping strips away all that unneeded functionality, leaving only the bits we need. From the perspective of a Raspberry Pi user, it is functionally identical to its predecessor: the same fast quad-core processor; the same multimedia capabilities; and the same PCI Express bus that has proven to be one of the most exciting features of the Raspberry Pi 5 platform. However, it is cheaper to make, and so is available to us at somewhat lower cost. And this, combined with the savings from halving the memory capacity, has allowed us to take $10 out of the cost of the finished product."
While it's excellent that Raspberry Pi has lowered the cost barrier for its computers and the 2 GB edition will be suitable for many, there are some people who will want to go for the higher-RAM variants. For example, if you want to connect dual 4Kp60 displays, open a hundred browser tabs, or compile complex software from source, then you will be better off with the better-spec Raspberry Pi 5.
If you are tempted to buy this lower-cost Raspberry Pi 5, you can find approved retailers on the Raspberry Pi website. Even if you aren't in the US, check the website because Raspberry Pi is available in lots of countries.
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