Chris or Jeff: I'd be interested in a follow up explanation / expansion video or blog post about what was commented on by Eben concerning RISCV and ARM development.
@@ExplainingComputers It didn't seem overlong at all; in fact when it ended I was like... that was half an hour already?? Evidently there were no waste words.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm doing better. Had a rocky week back in the hospital but I'm back home again, and that's much better than sleeping in a hospital bed with machines all around!
Really good to know what's happening in the supply chain and to get first hand information, well done Chris for securing this interview and thank you to the CEO of RPi for being kind enough to express not only his feedback on microchip supply, but for expressing his understanding in the whole situation brought on by Covid, and for acknowledging how his customer base is as much for home hobby as it is for businesses and how they managed it to keep as many as possible who are part of the supply chain in business. Well done to you both.
"It's completely justifiable for a company to want to accumulate the product that would cause them to go out of business, but its a disaster." very well said Eden.
It's interesting how his sales force would negotiate a guaranteed but more reasonable quantity with the customer to ensure product remained available. This prevents the 'toilet roll' problem we had in 2020. However we've still ended up with PI out of stock but learning the Pico has been valuable.
Right, so now we then have the RPi folks themselves (in a way) hoarding the available stock for the industrial users basically. Seems like it's out of the frying pan and into the fire, especially when you consider that other silicon-based products are quite likely in short supply as well. It would be interesting to see the statistics on 1) the total number of education and hobby sales the RPi units have had over the years, compared with 2) the total number of industrial sales. I have never seen formal data on that but something tells me that it would be many times higher on the education/hobbyist side, seeing as how (as he said himself) there are relatively few 100000-unit customers. It's very sad that this "gray market" exists and people are trying to sell $250 RPi4 units on Amazon...because (sadly) there are those who will pay that. Capitalism at it's "finest," I guess.
@@bluehornet6752 Do what I do, and view the Raspberry Pi as an industrial component. Don't get me wrong, I love the little machines, but times change. Which means I am now looking towards the Rock 5B all the more now, because it is a computer you can invest in for years. It also looks like it has dual channel RAM, so will be wonderful for speed. Yes, it is more expensive, but as a long term investment, it is not so crazy. Also, I have spent that sort of money to try and make the Raspberry Pi 4B fit better what I have in mind anyway. Capitalism allows for choices and alternatives, which there are. The biggest advantage for the Raspberry Pi has been the support for it, but that gap is being steadily narrowed all the time now. I certainly don't hold any malice towards them, and wish them all the best. But the situation is what the situation is.
@@ExplainingComputers It is market forces in action. Now wait for other economic forces to appear, and to cause even more change. This is going to remain a turbulent couple of years.
Hi Leslie. I was thinking about making a video where I commented on Raspberry Pi availability. But then I thought, "what about interviewing Eben?" And he agreed -- so we get definitive information. :)
@@ExplainingComputers His information was helpful. However there is only so much smart stock keeping you can do until you just run out. I don't think scalpers created shortages so much as higher prices. Some things simply won't get built because they'd be too expensive but that would leave more PIs for those that could absorb the cost.
Great interview, Chris. I really liked your style - asking sensible questions and giving Eben plenty of time to provide his interesting and candid answers. I think their plans sound very sensible and thought his ARM/RISC take was especially interesting. I think he also made an excellent point about how low volume and small some of their industrial partners are, which is often forgotten by some.
Although this is a huge deviation from your normal monologue content style, it is a germinal, long-needed, founder-executive-level update on the entire Raspberry Pi line of computing products, giving us a much-needed, credible, highly-informed, insight into the supply problems, but also a new-found greater hope for improvements in the coming months. It was VERY enlightening to hear the discussions around the OEM channel's use cases and demand-levels for the product line. As hobbyist retail consumers, we often think we are the center of the universe for the single-board-computer venders, and it is an excellent reality-check to find out that we are not. It helps very much to get our expectations in line for future product availability to us in the retail channel. Also, so sorry, Dr. Barnatt, about his news for you on the near-future prospects for RISC-V development. His explanations for the problems that would need to overcome are very insightful as well. Thank you, sir, for this fine interview, and the public service it provides. I cannot imagine anybody else who could do it nearly as well. It would be almost impossible to find a more relevant and important interview subject than Dr. Upton, so if you plan to do other interviews in the future, this will be a hard one to beat. I hope it gets all the views it deserves!
Thanks for this. I am awaiting my c.£50 VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC arriving in a few weeks time. It's quad core U74 1.5Ghz SoC should offer somewhere between Pi3 and Pi 4 performance (based on my earlier tests of a 1.0Ghz, dual core U74 SBC). So unless I've missed something utterly fundamental, there will be maker SBCs with a Raspberry Pi price point, and approaching Pi performance, on the market in 2023. And within a month or so, I should be able to show and prove this with real, on-sale hardware . . . Although this does not mean that Eben is wrong about there being is no logic for current ARM SBC manufacturers to migrate to RISC-V. :)
What a great surprise to have Mr. Upton interviewed on EC channel! Hope the video will be big success and we can see more interviews in 2023 :) Happy holidays to all!!!
I predict Raspberry will have RISC-V product at some point. It is in keeping with the core values of the project. I expect RISC-V will rapidly develop, seeing as large players are adopting it. From auto/robotics to servers, eventually to desktops. Open source hardware with open source software. Thank you Eden for coming on the show. Its good to put a face with the goods. People working with people. Like it!
I disagree. I think an award like that should be reserved for people who actually sacrifice or jeopardize their own personal well being for the sake of the country and/or countrymen. Otherwise, it would be like honoring someone for nothing more than achieving upper social status or something. Providing jobs and creating a niche industry that benefits people definitely deserves recognition, but I'm not exactly seeing the sacrifice that almost any business person wouldn't have taken -- certainly not life endangering -- that would warrant knighthood. Not sure you'd want to cheapen an honor like that (which has already been somewhat tarnished). ... Then again, considering who might bestow an honor like knighthood, I don't think it would make much difference. After all, some people have received it for nothing more than a popular song or two. And it's not like there are any true leaders who would want to recognize values like "honor, duty, country" either.
I always love these style of interviews! So fascinating to see industry professionals speak on their products, especially when it relates to our favorite SBC!
I give up on the Raspberry Pi.....I just ordered an Orange Pi 5 for less than half of what the Raspberry Pi scalpers are charging. RPi will be left in the dust. I am a developer. Great channel Chris.
Год назад+5
Great interview! I too thought it was best to keep it whole. It is also refreshing to hear a CEO talk with complete transparency and honesty about their supply chain issues, priorities, current and future plans, and he even entertained the idea of switching to RISC-V processors. He is a very smart guy.
I’m really liking Ebon’s approach. As much as it sucks for those of us with no intention of creating a product, in the long run, it would suck worse if that portion of the market were undermined by knowing the company doesn’t have your back for building a business. They’re a major chunk of what makes this viable, both financially and contributing to the community. I would have asked, though, one final follow-up: From what you know right now, what direction would you LIKE a Pi 5 to go? That is, what improvements do you see bringing the most value to the consumers of your top-end product, if the opportunity arose?
I ordered a Pi4 8Gb just a year ago and had an update this week with an expected delivery of mid-August next year. I'm not in any rush for the board and am resigned to it arriving at some point, but at least this interview added some context around the issues the Pi Foundation have been experiencing and what work they've had to do to keep production running. A very interesting and informative interview. Thanks for posting this, Christopher.👍
Sorry for being so late to this one, Chris, I wanted to wait until I had time to give it my full attention. Well worth the wait! I don't think I've ever seen another interview where a CEO answered questions as straight-forwardly and in-depth. I was particularly impressed with the explantion about how the foundation reasons about approaching RISC-V. I got a slight chuckle from Eben's conservatism about releasing a new product for fear of having it furthering supply issues. It made me think back to NVIDIA during the absolute height of the GPU drought basically saying , "Sorry that no GPUs are available. Anyway here's our brand new line of the latest greatest GPU's-- that you also can't get." Keep up the great work, man!
What a great interview. I think we got most of the questions we wanted answering. It was great to see that you asked the question then let Eben answer without chipping in like some interviewers do.
@@ExplainingComputers If you get fed up of teaching us about computers you could teach “proper interviewers” how to do their jobs better. Have a great Christmas and a Merry New Year
So cool to been able to listen a tech company representative who really knows about tech and is not just repeating a guideline whit what can and can't say about the company he/she works for. Thanks!
Eben Upton looks striking similar to Jason Statham (actor); he could be a stand-in for his movies. BTW: thanks for the update on the Raspberry Pi production!
What Eben Upton said about Raspberry Pi 5 will have to wait longer while doing recovering mode due to pandemic, supply and demand and manufacture which makes perfect sense. Thank you Chris for putting this great interview helping me as salesman to understand current situation and future.
Great interview! I learned a lot, including how to correctly pronounce "Eben". I now owe Mr. Upton an apology for saying it wrong; my excuse is that I'm Canadian, and we Canucks can't pronounce anything correctly!
Great interview, wonderfully conducted. :) I really appreciated how open and down to earth Eben was in this; it helps a lot that he's very much with the community on how aggravating the last couple years have been and not trying to public relations it away. That said--and this is clearly not something the Raspberry Pi Foundation can control--I'm very concerned with the general state of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem in terms of R and D/the Pi that replaces the Pi 4. There's plenty of hardware that outperforms a Pi 4B right now, but absolutely none of it can compete with the software support on the Pi 4B. I've got a Vim 4. The hardware is spectacular. It's a complete nightmare if you want to try to run anything but the OSes that are shipped with it, the hardware is still basically in beta, as far as the device drivers are concerned. Not to mention that updating the OS at all still requires reformatting and starting over. It's been a great docker machine, but it's absolutely not a replacement for a Pi 4B. Yet. And the 4B wasn't ever really meant to be a general purpose computer, IMHO--that it's been turned into that by the community is kind of amazing. At the least, its power distribution system gives it away; plug in the wrong USB 3 thumb-drive, or the wrong (powered!) USB 3.0 hub, and the system can't boot. Plug in a USB 3.0 2.5GbE ethernet adapter and a USB 3.0 thumb drive, and the system can't boot. When/if the Pi 5 arrives, it needs not just a more powerful CPU/GPU and more IO, but power rails that make plugging in a USB device as mindlessly easy as it is on an X86/64 mini PC. Just because something doesn't work due to lack of drivers doesn't mean it should overwhelm your device and keep it from booting. I'm concerned that hobbyists and makers will end up flocking to (ever cheaper), more powerful and featureful X86 boards, which will lock the community into being dependent on Intel's/AMD's ultra low power chipsets, which do get development, but aren't being pushed nearly as fast or as hard as ARM SBC CPUs right now. Last I heard (about 6-12 months ago), the Pi Foundation wasn't really looking at any potential specifications for a Pi 5 because they couldn't even meet demand for the 4B. The more the market is flooded by ARM SBCs with impressive hardware but in-progress/incomplete/incompatible-with-each-other software, the weaker the whole ARM SBC ecosystem will become. (A big part of this problem would go away if there was some sort of common framework API/driver set that would allow all competing ARM SBC processors to execute the same core set of instructions so "ARM Ubuntu" would just work on any of them, for instance, with each CPU's additional features being enabled by drivers, but that's a pipe dream of mine at this point.) I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that it's been distressing to see the Pi remain the gold standard for software but continue to be constrained by its aging hardware.
Great interview, Chris! Well done! And a huge thanks to Eben, I know that finding the right balance in unprecedented situations, such as what we are coming out of, is immensely complicated to do. I refuse to buy scalped Pi's, and really hope that we collectively do stick them with inventory that they are unable to make money in.
Fascinating interview, and great to hear all of the behind-the-scenes issues that he has to take into account as the industry in general and RPi in particular have to keep in mind as we get out of this pandemic mess. I was also very interested to hear about the commercial/industrial uses of the RPi. It was easy to think that it is only a hobbyist/maker board, but clearly it is much more. Thanks Chris, and happy holidays to you and yours.
Very Interesting. Thanks for putting that together! Its very good to find someone who champions small business. It didn't seem long at all because of the solid content.
what i got from this interview. Continued out of stock for a while, specially if you arent a industrial customer. hopefully there are more SBC that can suppluñy the market
I have a Mom and Pop business. We’re very dependent on Raspberry Pi as a core component to our business. We’ve had a few die and we’re running on a shoestring. This is good news indeed.
Chris, that was a really informative interview to let a layman get a peek inside the SBC industry and how it is recovering from the pandemic and associated supply chain issues. Great episode!
Just a quick question here. Because you upload to RUclips on a Sunday and Christmas day 2022 is on a Sunday, will you be continuing with your weekly upload this Sunday?
Great interview, thank you Chris! It would be wonderful if the Arm-based SBCs could come to a memory standard for DRAM like we have in the x86 world. Imagine you'd just buy a Pi5 without memory and can add e.g. up to 32GB of memory modules. Right now we still look into 1-4GB SBC with a few that go beyond at high prices.
Magnificent interview. Thanks for sharing and not limiting the conversation. I can imagine Eben is very busy and his openness to share his thoughts and challenges with us is truly appreciated.
Very valuable for Eben to get on one of the top shows for Raspberry PI customers. Most of his big customers would have started by buying one PI and making it do something useful.
The Raspberry Pi is truly an amazing product and yes it has been EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to see not only the lack of the product but also the JACKED-UP prices for the few you can find. I hope the supply goes back to what it's supposed to be and the prices leveled back to reflect the original intent behind what the Raspberry Pi was created for.
Congratulations on a famous journalistic scoop! Lots of information about the future availability of our favourite SBC and the issues surrounding supply. Moreover, I allow myself two reflections in the light of this information: digital autonomy (software as well as hardware) should be prioritized by our states, at least, "ad minima"... And, once again, whatever the hardware platform used, the software issue remains decisive. Thank you for this insightful presentation!
Thanks Chris and Eben, that was probably the most interesting interview I've ever seen. Big fan of Pi's and big fan of Chris. Really love the RPi ethos - keep up the good work!
At the much higher level other SBCs are now (CPU cores / frequency / RAM / *GPU* / *NPU* / *M.2 slot* / *eMMC* / connectivity, ..), I can't see how Raspberry Pi will be able to catch up with a single _one-size-fits-all_ Raspberry Pi 5 as catching up with all these features while keeping a low-cost market positioning seems impossible. I believe the only way forward is to have two versions: a basic Raspberry Pi 5 (educational) and a *Raspberry Pi 5 Pro* . Two other options would be: - a *modular SBC* providing some empty *slots* onto the PCB, connected to the CPU over a fast bus (PCIe, ..), onto which you could plug some extension modules like a GPU module or an M.2 module or an NPU module.. similarly to the PCIe slots of a standard PC motherboard. - an *extension board* of free slots (6?, 8?), connected to the CPU over a fast bus, to plug any of these modules: GPU, NPU, M.2 NVME hard drives, etc..
well, pi never aims to catch up, they always did what they wanted and others copied them like with the ports, shape, level of performance and boot options people do want the m.2 sata or nvme slot and more gpu and cpu processing power, but other companies already offer that, what pi can still offer is the best support, the best comunity and the best quality i do think they should offer one desktop replacement version with really powerful hardware as you mention, but with the prices competition has put on their sbcs, i don't know how they can compete with such product and sell, but seeing people are paying 500 dollars for a pi nes kit, perhaps it might work
It's all about the whole operating system, software, hardware peripherals, developers, users ecosystem. Pi's might lag in horsepower, but the overall offering and price still beats the rest - and Eben knows it.
A wonderful interview with a lot of down-to-earth insight that reflects not only RPi's struggles, but that of the industry's as a whole. Very easy to digest for your average joe with some basic knowledge.
A triumph! 👍 Mayhaps Mr. Upton found some new Rpi fans and brought back a few lost ones, too. Excellent questions from EC/Chris! Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
One of the best explanations of the chip shortage I've heard; most commenters omit the unanticipated increase in demand due to the various restrictions imposed by governments. Really enjoyed hearing from the originator of the Pi line. Thank you.
@@KameraShy It's not the pandemic, but the overreaction by various governents that is the cause. You can't just slam on the brakes in a complex, interconnected world and not have effects and more importantly, inanticipated countereffects.
Just goes to show how popular the Pi is when you have industry relying on its supply! Mega KUDOS to the Pi foundation for realising the need from industry outweighs the maker community and ensuring the supply line to them- if I don't get a Pi, I won't lose my business or livelihood so I can wait! Merry Christmas Christopher and to all the EC community - been a tough couple of years due to covid but I feel 23 will be better and I look forward to watching the best in the business when it comes to all things relating to computers and the best formatted and presented videos on RUclips.
I really appreciated that interview. It was good to hear perspective of the producer of the product, what their pressures and desires are. I got the sense that he appreciated reaching your audience via this channel. I hope that we could be privileged to this experience again.
I am not a native English speaker. I could understand very little words from Eben. It is very hard to me to catch words. Because he is speaking so fast. I could understand every word from Chris. (Chris) You are fine speaker and you should be a public speaker. Thank you for your videos.
I gave up designing products for the raspberry pi. I wasted way to much time developing products for clients that I cannot deliver due to unavailability of cm4 modules in Australia.
As the first lockdowns occurred I was in a no-mans land. I had just moved from hobbyist to prototyping, have sourced sensors and parts in the 1000s quantity, and using retail channels to source raspberry pi's and got my first products underway. Regrettably that was dead in its tracks with the pandemic and the halt in Pi availability. Hopefully there will be a way forward, and with the release of the Pico W it could mean that. The Pico W is cheap enough that one Pico per one sensor is feasible. Rather than cramming various sensors on one device.
There are many among us that know very little about Raspberry Pi. Perhaps it is time to make a video explaining the whole subject of Raspberry Pi for beginners?
Thank you Chris for showing us the full video with Eben. The interview was informative & extremely interesting, looking forward to the next instalment.
While I was initially surprised by the type of video this was, I really enjoyed it, and am optimistic for bring about to get pis for the next projects I have on the docket. This was a great video, as always.
That was a brilliant and enlightening interview. Thanks Chris and Eben. I do hope that some of the overly cynical and borderline conspiracy theories can be put to bed now. Times have been strange of late as Eben alludes to here. With so many parts of our lives have disrupted, it's only natural for some of us to fall back on hobbies and interests. To then be foiled by supply chain problems only increases the frustration., so I hope we can all be patient and ride this out. It's times like this that people start to try to carefully manage the available resources, explore alternative ways of achieving the same goals, and essentially doing the most with less. I do feel that there is a subtext to this interview that we can all learn from.
I own 4 Pi4s, daily 3 of them. I'd get a 5th to replace my earliest rev 1.1 and really only because the micro hdmi ports are shot. Terrific devices. One of the best, if not the best. Still using Twister OS, recently upgraded to Android 13, I switch between them. Works better than all the Lineage OS's before it. Not sure how much further these things can go as is, but it's going to be pretty tough topping a 4B without losing anything they can already do. Overclock to the max and throttle back to stable, otherwise it's a waste to own one. All of mine are OCed all the time. I would upgrade the power to higher voltage, processors to 8 core, better GPU, Return to fullsize HDMI port, but, double stack them so there still can be 2. The biggest problems I've had with mine are the micro HDMI ports and being able to use all 4 USB ports is sometimes problematic. Maybe a specialty port for clustering?
Everything about this chip shortage wasn't such a bad thing. One of the best things to come out of this was the Pico and the RP2040 3rd party boards. These boards aren't just copies of the Pico. Companies did a lot of innovative things with those chips and made new boards with many more features than the original Pico. And then there is the esp32, which of course isn't Raspberry Pi but it has been combined with the RP2040. Many people don't realize this but those esp32 chips are as powerful as a Pentium Pro. I would really like to see Raspberry Pi get further into microcontrollers. The biggest frustration new users have is that there isn't a Raspberry Pi ecosystem behind something like the esp32. Many have now realized that a Pi 4 is overkill for many projects. A good microcontroller that finds a place in industry could fund so many of Raspberry Pi's educational objectives.
Interesting interview. The end grabbed my attention. Next year will be a recovery year for most companies. I was surprised that he was able to give you so much time. Thanks.
I designed an industrial device that required a RPi compute module 3 and it was scheduled for production in 2020. It became impossible to obtain the RPi, even though we were able to source all the other electronic components. We were forced to redesign the whole product with a different processor that we could actually obtain. It was a disaster.
Is it just me or does this guy talk faster than humanly possible? LoL World's record I think. Turn on Closed Captioning. LoL Seriously Chris we love your videos. 👍
This is a great interview. Thanx for shedding some light on the Pi shortages. I'm glad things are starting to normalise. My local licensed supplier has started selling Pi4's again!
Hiya Chris Here are some video Ideas: AI: - Demo of ChatGPT - Demo of Midjourney - Explaining AI software Security: - Password authentication software. E.g. Google Authenticator or Linux Keyring - Physical Authenticators like Yubikey / RSA token generator like SecureID - Explaining PGP - Digital Signatures / Airgapped devices. - Explaining MFA Great content and wish you good luck for the new year. Cheers, Dan
aside from the grey market, it is interesting to find several other mainly chinese based SBC products trying to fill in the gap with the current shortage of raspberry pi products. I purchased a Radxa Rock Pi 5b, which is way more powerfull but more expensive than the retail raspberry pi 4 price. I had never heard of Radxa, but found that they have been in the SBC market for quite some time. It would be great to see SBC market expand to the point where SBC from different manufacturers can have the same level of software support. Rather than Raspberry Pi monopolising the market.
I left the Raspberry Pi computer market, I appreciate this interview but am skeptical concerning projected availability so I migrated to x86 and won’t return to Pi 4
Small OEM customer here, we were left hoovering them up from eBay even though we started from a good position and got in touch with the foundation 8 months before our stock was finally exhausted. This experience has meant we are extending our safety stock out many times to what we would have if we were supported. Would love to see the scalpers left holding the bag.
The Raspberry sales people could not keep you stocked? Eben was saying they were working out deals where you would get what you needed regularly rather than buying a huge stock.
@@wayland7150 Wasn't our experience, the whole thing was pretty unpleasant, we only managed to secure OEM stock in the end by exercising contacts in Oxford - which is a depressing state of affairs. I assume they were just overwhelmed. Its pretty unpleasant to be in a position where you can't manufacture a product which has become vital for the future of your business. I think its helpful to just be clear about the reality of the situation, and no hard feelings for Raspberry Pi, at least they wanted to do the right thing - I'm not sure you could say the same for Texas Instruments who seem to just have total contempt for their small customers.
@@edc1569 The PI is aimed at individuals. You can buy a PI and end up running a business based on a product built with it. A larger company would buy the chip itself and probably in such huge volumes that their suppliers would never dare ignore them. I worked with a small established company and built them a prototype PI product. They ended up not going that way. A relief for me considering how much trouble that product would be in right now.
This pandemic era has been so hard in so many ways. It would really help a lot of people to have Raspberry Pi's to hack on and bring some joy back in our lives but even those have been massively impacted. I'm looking forward to Pi's being highly available again someday. But I also hope some of these other SBC makers can do a better job of creating the full experience like Raspberry Pi does, and that requires as serious an investment in the Operating System as the hardware itself. Raspberry Pi Foundation gets this, which is why we've got a fantastic array of Debian-flavored operating systems officially supported. Other SBC's may require a bit more intermediate to advanced Linux skills to get them working.
The other SBCs have some good hardware, but when you consider the entire ecosystem (OS, applications, accessories, code snippets, published projects), the Raspberry Pi is untouchable.
Oh, Raspberry Pis. How wonderful. Since my first Pi at Christmas 2014, they’ve been a big part of my life, especially before I had a PC. In case anyone is wondering I have a B+, 3B+, 3A+, 4, two Zero Ws, a Zero 2 W and a Pico.
Nice interview. Still using my R Pi 2 and would not spend the $$$ for the Pi 4. If I got a Pi 4 what to do with my Pi 2 which still works and even runs Octave?
My first significant use of the Raspberry Pi was in a cluster for the purpose of learning how to manage the work over the different nodes, and to understand the cost to make use of separate nodes. Another thing that the Pi is good for is to introduce a limit in resource (CPU, Memory, Network) which helps in learning how to handle these constraints.
What a fabulous and informative interview. Thanks Chris and Eben. Not meaning to ruin the mood but recent COVID related news from China isn’t great. Of course we need to worry about the people there first, but if the situation isn’t improved, the shortages are here to stay for a while, unfortunately. I hope I am wrong on this.
What I loved learning in this interview is what they meant by “industry customers”. I guess I’m happy that at least it’s not a Fortune 500 but SMEs. Thanks for posting ❤
That cat is either a very good manipulator or a unicorn in the business world. I am extremely skeptical by nature, and now I think Raspberry Pi is more awesome than sliced bread. I really appreciate that he did not just shut you down when you asked about what is coming next. I cannot wait to get my hands on a Pi 4 next year. I missed the short window at the beginning and have been waiting it out rather than pay scalper prices, or even scooping one up at retail that someone else needs more than I do. I mean i can run OctoPrint on my 3B+. Great interview, thank you!
I think he's a good egg but he's learned "corporate speak". There's probably reasons not to discuss the Pi 5 timeline, namely, if he says it's coming in July it might mean they've placed some huge backorder for Pi 4's and nobody wants them as they're waiting for Pi 5.
Thank you Eben for justifying my "supercomputer" Pi clusters that I have. I have mentioned in other channels about my 8 node Pi3 cluster and my 6 node Pi 4 cluster (wanted 8 but unable to reasonably purchase the last 2) and received the typical response. "Why? You can get much better performance from 6 or 8 laptops." My response is always, because I can and it is not quite the same as holding a Pi cluster in one hand.
Thanks for this, Chris,. Very informative. I have always been curious - is there a single component of say a CM4 that is in short supply, or is it multiple components? Is it the CPU? I have always wondered. Thanks again.
As far as I am aware, the biggest issue is the supply of SoCs (the main chip containing the CPU as you say). However, I don't think this is the only supply issue.
Great interview! This is the first good explanation I've heard explaining the chip shortage. We can really learn a lot listening to a CEO talk about his industry.
Good Video Chris, Nice to know that things are begining to return to normal however slowly. On a similar note, I see petrol prices here in Ireland (Kerry) are down to €1.51 and Diesel is down to €1.65 from a high of over €2.05 each not so long ago. So there is hope. I work in automotive electronic manufacture and supply of components has been our greatest problem since just before Feb 2020 with Covid and now Russia-Ukrane
One silver lining as a result of Pi shortages is that I tried a few alternatives. Your channel was a great resource to choose what to try. I used to run Home Assistant on a Pi3, but I now run it on an Odroid N2+ and I'm really happy with it!
Great interview and very interesting. Thank you for sharing this full interview. It helps getting an idea of what's going on behind the scenes regarding supplies etc. And yes, I can see that 2023 is going to be quite the busy year.
Thank you for posting this full interview, it is good to hear from two of my favorite people in the SBC space!
Greetings Jeff. I did consider cutting this down, but decided it was best to play out the whole thing. I hope that you are doing OK.
Chris or Jeff: I'd be interested in a follow up explanation / expansion video or blog post about what was commented on by Eben concerning RISCV and ARM development.
Get well, Jeff 🙏🏽🙏🏽🙏🏽
@@ExplainingComputers It didn't seem overlong at all; in fact when it ended I was like... that was half an hour already?? Evidently there were no waste words.
@@ExplainingComputers I'm doing better. Had a rocky week back in the hospital but I'm back home again, and that's much better than sleeping in a hospital bed with machines all around!
The severe and prolonged lack of availability is killing this fantastic platform.
1000x this comment! The lack of availability is unbelievably frustrating. I'm considering chancing it with a Rock 5.
totally.
@@dazraf I was just too considering an alternative
Yea, RK3588 looks really promising and it will for sure be problematic for RPI
have to agree, we`re almost facing the 2nd quarter of 2023 and nothing has changed due to prior big words of Mr. Upton 🙄
It is nice that Jason Statham is giving us updates on Raspberry Pi 😊
😂
Bahahaha
Ha, Ha! I'm glad to see that I'm not the only person who thinks he looks like Jason Statham. 🤣
Jason Statham using Ian McKellen's voice
*This was my first reaction too !!!* 😂
Really good to know what's happening in the supply chain and to get first hand information, well done Chris for securing this interview and thank you to the CEO of RPi for being kind enough to express not only his feedback on microchip supply, but for expressing his understanding in the whole situation brought on by Covid, and for acknowledging how his customer base is as much for home hobby as it is for businesses and how they managed it to keep as many as possible who are part of the supply chain in business. Well done to you both.
its the British way not many of us left unfortunately
You may want to wipe that brown stuff off your nose mate
It's great to see a company that's concerned about their customers and the harm caused by scalpers. Thanks for the interview!
They certainly have done some serious damage those low lives. In Australia I can't get one at all for 1.5 years. This is unbelievable.
Concerned about it's corporate customers... not the people who supported it from the beginning.
Thanks Chris. Eben is so satisfying to listen to; a fantastic combination of engineering and business perspective, and no wasted words.
Uumm
"It's completely justifiable for a company to want to accumulate the product that would cause them to go out of business, but its a disaster." very well said Eden.
I too liked this observation.
It's interesting how his sales force would negotiate a guaranteed but more reasonable quantity with the customer to ensure product remained available. This prevents the 'toilet roll' problem we had in 2020. However we've still ended up with PI out of stock but learning the Pico has been valuable.
Right, so now we then have the RPi folks themselves (in a way) hoarding the available stock for the industrial users basically. Seems like it's out of the frying pan and into the fire, especially when you consider that other silicon-based products are quite likely in short supply as well.
It would be interesting to see the statistics on 1) the total number of education and hobby sales the RPi units have had over the years, compared with 2) the total number of industrial sales. I have never seen formal data on that but something tells me that it would be many times higher on the education/hobbyist side, seeing as how (as he said himself) there are relatively few 100000-unit customers. It's very sad that this "gray market" exists and people are trying to sell $250 RPi4 units on Amazon...because (sadly) there are those who will pay that.
Capitalism at it's "finest," I guess.
@@bluehornet6752 Do what I do, and view the Raspberry Pi as an industrial component.
Don't get me wrong, I love the little machines, but times change. Which means I am now looking towards the Rock 5B all the more now, because it is a computer you can invest in for years. It also looks like it has dual channel RAM, so will be wonderful for speed. Yes, it is more expensive, but as a long term investment, it is not so crazy. Also, I have spent that sort of money to try and make the Raspberry Pi 4B fit better what I have in mind anyway.
Capitalism allows for choices and alternatives, which there are. The biggest advantage for the Raspberry Pi has been the support for it, but that gap is being steadily narrowed all the time now.
I certainly don't hold any malice towards them, and wish them all the best. But the situation is what the situation is.
@@ExplainingComputers It is market forces in action. Now wait for other economic forces to appear, and to cause even more change. This is going to remain a turbulent couple of years.
How wonderful to have a guest, even if it is virtually! I'm glad for this feedback from RPi more than most anybody!
Hi Leslie. I was thinking about making a video where I commented on Raspberry Pi availability. But then I thought, "what about interviewing Eben?" And he agreed -- so we get definitive information. :)
@@ExplainingComputers His information was helpful. However there is only so much smart stock keeping you can do until you just run out. I don't think scalpers created shortages so much as higher prices. Some things simply won't get built because they'd be too expensive but that would leave more PIs for those that could absorb the cost.
Always learn so much from listening to this guy. He does appear to be both open and believable in his discussions about the Pi.
Great interview, Chris. I really liked your style - asking sensible questions and giving Eben plenty of time to provide his interesting and candid answers. I think their plans sound very sensible and thought his ARM/RISC take was especially interesting. I think he also made an excellent point about how low volume and small some of their industrial partners are, which is often forgotten by some.
Although this is a huge deviation from your normal monologue content style, it is a germinal, long-needed, founder-executive-level update on the entire Raspberry Pi line of computing products, giving us a much-needed, credible, highly-informed, insight into the supply problems, but also a new-found greater hope for improvements in the coming months. It was VERY enlightening to hear the discussions around the OEM channel's use cases and demand-levels for the product line. As hobbyist retail consumers, we often think we are the center of the universe for the single-board-computer venders, and it is an excellent reality-check to find out that we are not. It helps very much to get our expectations in line for future product availability to us in the retail channel. Also, so sorry, Dr. Barnatt, about his news for you on the near-future prospects for RISC-V development. His explanations for the problems that would need to overcome are very insightful as well. Thank you, sir, for this fine interview, and the public service it provides. I cannot imagine anybody else who could do it nearly as well. It would be almost impossible to find a more relevant and important interview subject than Dr. Upton, so if you plan to do other interviews in the future, this will be a hard one to beat. I hope it gets all the views it deserves!
Thanks for this. I am awaiting my c.£50 VisionFive 2 RISC-V SBC arriving in a few weeks time. It's quad core U74 1.5Ghz SoC should offer somewhere between Pi3 and Pi 4 performance (based on my earlier tests of a 1.0Ghz, dual core U74 SBC). So unless I've missed something utterly fundamental, there will be maker SBCs with a Raspberry Pi price point, and approaching Pi performance, on the market in 2023. And within a month or so, I should be able to show and prove this with real, on-sale hardware . . .
Although this does not mean that Eben is wrong about there being is no logic for current ARM SBC manufacturers to migrate to RISC-V. :)
What a great surprise to have Mr. Upton interviewed on EC channel! Hope the video will be big success and we can see more interviews in 2023 :)
Happy holidays to all!!!
I predict Raspberry will have RISC-V product at some point. It is in keeping with the core values of the project. I expect RISC-V will rapidly develop, seeing as large players are adopting it. From auto/robotics to servers, eventually to desktops. Open source hardware with open source software.
Thank you Eden for coming on the show. Its good to put a face with the goods. People working with people. Like it!
How Eben Upton isn’t already Sir Eben Upton is beyond me. This man deserves some kind of UK Government award.
He hasn't betrayed his country, so no gongs for him!
I expect he'd be horrified to lumped in with the same group of people as the King's friend Jimmy Savile.
@@wayland7150 Totally understand you.
@@nonoyorbusness 😊
I disagree. I think an award like that should be reserved for people who actually sacrifice or jeopardize their own personal well being for the sake of the country and/or countrymen. Otherwise, it would be like honoring someone for nothing more than achieving upper social status or something. Providing jobs and creating a niche industry that benefits people definitely deserves recognition, but I'm not exactly seeing the sacrifice that almost any business person wouldn't have taken -- certainly not life endangering -- that would warrant knighthood. Not sure you'd want to cheapen an honor like that (which has already been somewhat tarnished).
... Then again, considering who might bestow an honor like knighthood, I don't think it would make much difference. After all, some people have received it for nothing more than a popular song or two. And it's not like there are any true leaders who would want to recognize values like "honor, duty, country" either.
I always love these style of interviews! So fascinating to see industry professionals speak on their products, especially when it relates to our favorite SBC!
I give up on the Raspberry Pi.....I just ordered an Orange Pi 5 for less than half of what the Raspberry Pi scalpers are charging. RPi will be left in the dust. I am a developer. Great channel Chris.
Great interview! I too thought it was best to keep it whole. It is also refreshing to hear a CEO talk with complete transparency and honesty about their supply chain issues, priorities, current and future plans, and he even entertained the idea of switching to RISC-V processors. He is a very smart guy.
I’m really liking Ebon’s approach. As much as it sucks for those of us with no intention of creating a product, in the long run, it would suck worse if that portion of the market were undermined by knowing the company doesn’t have your back for building a business. They’re a major chunk of what makes this viable, both financially and contributing to the community. I would have asked, though, one final follow-up: From what you know right now, what direction would you LIKE a Pi 5 to go? That is, what improvements do you see bringing the most value to the consumers of your top-end product, if the opportunity arose?
Maybe you should ask Eben to make this channel his annual Xmas message to the world. This was a wonderful watch
A nice idea for an annual update.
I ordered a Pi4 8Gb just a year ago and had an update this week with an expected delivery of mid-August next year. I'm not in any rush for the board and am resigned to it arriving at some point, but at least this interview added some context around the issues the Pi Foundation have been experiencing and what work they've had to do to keep production running.
A very interesting and informative interview. Thanks for posting this, Christopher.👍
Sorry for being so late to this one, Chris, I wanted to wait until I had time to give it my full attention. Well worth the wait! I don't think I've ever seen another interview where a CEO answered questions as straight-forwardly and in-depth. I was particularly impressed with the explantion about how the foundation reasons about approaching RISC-V.
I got a slight chuckle from Eben's conservatism about releasing a new product for fear of having it furthering supply issues. It made me think back to NVIDIA during the absolute height of the GPU drought basically saying , "Sorry that no GPUs are available. Anyway here's our brand new line of the latest greatest GPU's-- that you also can't get."
Keep up the great work, man!
Great job. A few well-chosen questions, and then let Mr. Upton run with them :) His obvious enthusiasm for communication is a joy to behold.
What a great interview. I think we got most of the questions we wanted answering. It was great to see that you asked the question then let Eben answer without chipping in like some interviewers do.
Thanks Dave. My approach from the outset was to provide direction, but to say at little as possible, and let Eben speak.
@@ExplainingComputers If you get fed up of teaching us about computers you could teach “proper interviewers” how to do their jobs better.
Have a great Christmas and a Merry New Year
@@ExplainingComputers I noticed that too. And it went very well!
So cool to been able to listen a tech company representative who really knows about tech and is not just repeating a guideline whit what can and can't say about the company he/she works for. Thanks!
Eben Upton looks striking similar to Jason Statham (actor); he could be a stand-in for his movies. BTW: thanks for the update on the Raspberry Pi production!
yes it looks pretty😃😃
What Eben Upton said about Raspberry Pi 5 will have to wait longer while doing recovering mode due to pandemic, supply and demand and manufacture which makes perfect sense. Thank you Chris for putting this great interview helping me as salesman to understand current situation and future.
Great interview! I learned a lot, including how to correctly pronounce "Eben". I now owe Mr. Upton an apology for saying it wrong; my excuse is that I'm Canadian, and we Canucks can't pronounce anything correctly!
As an Australian I thought it was Eee-Ben not Eh-Ben
@@darkobelisk4076 Yes, that was my Canadian take on it as well!
I really enjoyed this interview; all stuff and no fluff. Concise, well articulated and densely informative.
Great interview, wonderfully conducted. :)
I really appreciated how open and down to earth Eben was in this; it helps a lot that he's very much with the community on how aggravating the last couple years have been and not trying to public relations it away.
That said--and this is clearly not something the Raspberry Pi Foundation can control--I'm very concerned with the general state of the Raspberry Pi ecosystem in terms of R and D/the Pi that replaces the Pi 4. There's plenty of hardware that outperforms a Pi 4B right now, but absolutely none of it can compete with the software support on the Pi 4B. I've got a Vim 4. The hardware is spectacular. It's a complete nightmare if you want to try to run anything but the OSes that are shipped with it, the hardware is still basically in beta, as far as the device drivers are concerned. Not to mention that updating the OS at all still requires reformatting and starting over. It's been a great docker machine, but it's absolutely not a replacement for a Pi 4B. Yet.
And the 4B wasn't ever really meant to be a general purpose computer, IMHO--that it's been turned into that by the community is kind of amazing. At the least, its power distribution system gives it away; plug in the wrong USB 3 thumb-drive, or the wrong (powered!) USB 3.0 hub, and the system can't boot. Plug in a USB 3.0 2.5GbE ethernet adapter and a USB 3.0 thumb drive, and the system can't boot. When/if the Pi 5 arrives, it needs not just a more powerful CPU/GPU and more IO, but power rails that make plugging in a USB device as mindlessly easy as it is on an X86/64 mini PC. Just because something doesn't work due to lack of drivers doesn't mean it should overwhelm your device and keep it from booting.
I'm concerned that hobbyists and makers will end up flocking to (ever cheaper), more powerful and featureful X86 boards, which will lock the community into being dependent on Intel's/AMD's ultra low power chipsets, which do get development, but aren't being pushed nearly as fast or as hard as ARM SBC CPUs right now. Last I heard (about 6-12 months ago), the Pi Foundation wasn't really looking at any potential specifications for a Pi 5 because they couldn't even meet demand for the 4B. The more the market is flooded by ARM SBCs with impressive hardware but in-progress/incomplete/incompatible-with-each-other software, the weaker the whole ARM SBC ecosystem will become.
(A big part of this problem would go away if there was some sort of common framework API/driver set that would allow all competing ARM SBC processors to execute the same core set of instructions so "ARM Ubuntu" would just work on any of them, for instance, with each CPU's additional features being enabled by drivers, but that's a pipe dream of mine at this point.)
I'm not sure where I'm going with this, except to say that it's been distressing to see the Pi remain the gold standard for software but continue to be constrained by its aging hardware.
Great interview, I like that Eben didn’t dumb anything down, just spore plainly.
But good availability in Q3? That’s basically in forever.
Great interview, Chris! Well done!
And a huge thanks to Eben, I know that finding the right balance in unprecedented situations, such as what we are coming out of, is immensely complicated to do.
I refuse to buy scalped Pi's, and really hope that we collectively do stick them with inventory that they are unable to make money in.
Great, succinct look at what's been going on in not just the SBC space, but the world in general. A delightful and useful 30 minutes!!! Thank you.
Great to see you guys chatting, You've both done so much to promote the understanding of computing concepts etc You both deserve awards!
Amazing interview Chris. Heck of a year for Explaining Computers... Thanks for a great channel. Cheers and happy holidays to you.
Thanks Steve, and best festive wishes to you. :)
Fascinating interview, and great to hear all of the behind-the-scenes issues that he has to take into account as the industry in general and RPi in particular have to keep in mind as we get out of this pandemic mess. I was also very interested to hear about the commercial/industrial uses of the RPi. It was easy to think that it is only a hobbyist/maker board, but clearly it is much more. Thanks Chris, and happy holidays to you and yours.
Greetings Chris.
Excellent!!! A big thank you to you and Mr. Upton. Now, I can take a deep breath and try to be patient.
Zero 2 W 🎅🎅 Please...
Very Interesting. Thanks for putting that together! Its very good to find someone who champions small business. It didn't seem long at all because of the solid content.
what i got from this interview. Continued out of stock for a while, specially if you arent a industrial customer. hopefully there are more SBC that can suppluñy the market
I have a Mom and Pop business. We’re very dependent on Raspberry Pi as a core component to our business. We’ve had a few die and we’re running on a shoestring. This is good news indeed.
Chris, that was a really informative interview to let a layman get a peek inside the SBC industry and how it is recovering from the pandemic and associated supply chain issues. Great episode!
Just a quick question here. Because you upload to RUclips on a Sunday and Christmas day 2022 is on a Sunday, will you be continuing with your weekly upload this Sunday?
Hi Edward. There will indeed be an upload this Sunday (Chrismas day), and also the next Sunday (New Year's Day).
Great Interview. I would love to see more of these types of videos, along with the regular content.
Great interview, thank you Chris! It would be wonderful if the Arm-based SBCs could come to a memory standard for DRAM like we have in the x86 world. Imagine you'd just buy a Pi5 without memory and can add e.g. up to 32GB of memory modules. Right now we still look into 1-4GB SBC with a few that go beyond at high prices.
Magnificent interview. Thanks for sharing and not limiting the conversation. I can imagine Eben is very busy and his openness to share his thoughts and challenges with us is truly appreciated.
Very valuable for Eben to get on one of the top shows for Raspberry PI customers. Most of his big customers would have started by buying one PI and making it do something useful.
This is a great interview. I interviewed Eben during the shortage so it’s good to see it’s ending
The Raspberry Pi is truly an amazing product and yes it has been EXTREMELY FRUSTRATING to see not only the lack of the product but also the JACKED-UP prices for the few you can find. I hope the supply goes back to what it's supposed to be and the prices leveled back to reflect the original intent behind what the Raspberry Pi was created for.
Congratulations on a famous journalistic scoop! Lots of information about the future availability of our favourite SBC and the issues surrounding supply. Moreover, I allow myself two reflections in the light of this information: digital autonomy (software as well as hardware) should be prioritized by our states, at least, "ad minima"... And, once again, whatever the hardware platform used, the software issue remains decisive. Thank you for this insightful presentation!
A very interesting interview. If you speak to him again before they finalise the Pi5, PLEASE mention a full-size HDMI port!
Thanks Chris and Eben, that was probably the most interesting interview I've ever seen. Big fan of Pi's and big fan of Chris. Really love the RPi ethos - keep up the good work!
At the much higher level other SBCs are now (CPU cores / frequency / RAM / *GPU* / *NPU* / *M.2 slot* / *eMMC* / connectivity, ..), I can't see how Raspberry Pi will be able to catch up with a single _one-size-fits-all_ Raspberry Pi 5 as catching up with all these features while keeping a low-cost market positioning seems impossible. I believe the only way forward is to have two versions: a basic Raspberry Pi 5 (educational) and a *Raspberry Pi 5 Pro* .
Two other options would be:
- a *modular SBC* providing some empty *slots* onto the PCB, connected to the CPU over a fast bus (PCIe, ..), onto which you could plug some extension modules like a GPU module or an M.2 module or an NPU module.. similarly to the PCIe slots of a standard PC motherboard.
- an *extension board* of free slots (6?, 8?), connected to the CPU over a fast bus, to plug any of these modules: GPU, NPU, M.2 NVME hard drives, etc..
well, pi never aims to catch up, they always did what they wanted and others copied them like with the ports, shape, level of performance and boot options
people do want the m.2 sata or nvme slot and more gpu and cpu processing power, but other companies already offer that, what pi can still offer is the best support, the best comunity and the best quality
i do think they should offer one desktop replacement version with really powerful hardware as you mention, but with the prices competition has put on their sbcs, i don't know how they can compete with such product and sell, but seeing people are paying 500 dollars for a pi nes kit, perhaps it might work
Or you could switch to Orange Pi which has all of these features and is very inexpensive.
It's all about the whole operating system, software, hardware peripherals, developers, users ecosystem. Pi's might lag in horsepower, but the overall offering and price still beats the rest - and Eben knows it.
A wonderful interview with a lot of down-to-earth insight that reflects not only RPi's struggles,
but that of the industry's as a whole. Very easy to digest for your average joe with some basic knowledge.
A triumph! 👍 Mayhaps Mr. Upton found some new Rpi fans and brought back a few lost ones, too.
Excellent questions from EC/Chris!
Kindest regards, neighbours and friends.
One of the best explanations of the chip shortage I've heard; most commenters omit the unanticipated increase in demand due to the various restrictions imposed by governments. Really enjoyed hearing from the originator of the Pi line. Thank you.
I don't buy it. They all try to blame the pandemic.
@@KameraShy It's not the pandemic, but the overreaction by various governents that is the cause. You can't just slam on the brakes in a complex, interconnected world and not have effects and more importantly, inanticipated countereffects.
Thanks you Chris and Eben, and Merry Christmas from Downunder
Just goes to show how popular the Pi is when you have industry relying on its supply! Mega KUDOS to the Pi foundation for realising the need from industry outweighs the maker community and ensuring the supply line to them- if I don't get a Pi, I won't lose my business or livelihood so I can wait! Merry Christmas Christopher and to all the EC community - been a tough couple of years due to covid but I feel 23 will be better and I look forward to watching the best in the business when it comes to all things relating to computers and the best formatted and presented videos on RUclips.
I really appreciated that interview. It was good to hear perspective of the producer of the product, what their pressures and desires are. I got the sense that he appreciated reaching your audience via this channel. I hope that we could be privileged to this experience again.
I am not a native English speaker. I could understand very little words from Eben. It is very hard to me to catch words. Because he is speaking so fast.
I could understand every word from Chris. (Chris) You are fine speaker and you should be a public speaker. Thank you for your videos.
I gave up designing products for the raspberry pi. I wasted way to much time developing products for clients that I cannot deliver due to unavailability of cm4 modules in Australia.
As the first lockdowns occurred I was in a no-mans land. I had just moved from hobbyist to prototyping, have sourced sensors and parts in the 1000s quantity, and using retail channels to source raspberry pi's and got my first products underway. Regrettably that was dead in its tracks with the pandemic and the halt in Pi availability.
Hopefully there will be a way forward, and with the release of the Pico W it could mean that.
The Pico W is cheap enough that one Pico per one sensor is feasible. Rather than cramming various sensors on one device.
There are many among us that know very little about Raspberry Pi. Perhaps it is time to make a video explaining the whole subject of Raspberry Pi for beginners?
Now that is a great idea -- probably mid 2023 when they become readily available for purchase again.
@@ExplainingComputers Great! Just another proof why your channel is so great!
Thank you Chris for showing us the full video with Eben. The interview was informative & extremely interesting, looking forward to the next instalment.
While I was initially surprised by the type of video this was, I really enjoyed it, and am optimistic for bring about to get pis for the next projects I have on the docket. This was a great video, as always.
That was a brilliant and enlightening interview. Thanks Chris and Eben.
I do hope that some of the overly cynical and borderline conspiracy theories can be put to bed now. Times have been strange of late as Eben alludes to here. With so many parts of our lives have disrupted, it's only natural for some of us to fall back on hobbies and interests. To then be foiled by supply chain problems only increases the frustration., so I hope we can all be patient and ride this out.
It's times like this that people start to try to carefully manage the available resources, explore alternative ways of achieving the same goals, and essentially doing the most with less. I do feel that there is a subtext to this interview that we can all learn from.
Agreed. This is a long interview that I presented in full because the context and subtext that I think it provides is really important as you say.
I own 4 Pi4s, daily 3 of them. I'd get a 5th to replace my earliest rev 1.1 and really only because the micro hdmi ports are shot. Terrific devices. One of the best, if not the best. Still using Twister OS, recently upgraded to Android 13, I switch between them. Works better than all the Lineage OS's before it. Not sure how much further these things can go as is, but it's going to be pretty tough topping a 4B without losing anything they can already do. Overclock to the max and throttle back to stable, otherwise it's a waste to own one. All of mine are OCed all the time. I would upgrade the power to higher voltage, processors to 8 core, better GPU, Return to fullsize HDMI port, but, double stack them so there still can be 2. The biggest problems I've had with mine are the micro HDMI ports and being able to use all 4 USB ports is sometimes problematic. Maybe a specialty port for clustering?
Everything about this chip shortage wasn't such a bad thing. One of the best things to come out of this was the Pico and the RP2040 3rd party boards. These boards aren't just copies of the Pico. Companies did a lot of innovative things with those chips and made new boards with many more features than the original Pico. And then there is the esp32, which of course isn't Raspberry Pi but it has been combined with the RP2040. Many people don't realize this but those esp32 chips are as powerful as a Pentium Pro. I would really like to see Raspberry Pi get further into microcontrollers. The biggest frustration new users have is that there isn't a Raspberry Pi ecosystem behind something like the esp32. Many have now realized that a Pi 4 is overkill for many projects. A good microcontroller that finds a place in industry could fund so many of Raspberry Pi's educational objectives.
Great interview, please do more interviews Mr Chris, very interesting material.
An excellent interview and really informative in regards to the supply chain issues. You would be so good on the BBCs Click technology show.
The BBC? Anyone appearing anywhere associated with that propaganda machine forfeits all credibility.
Interesting interview. The end grabbed my attention. Next year will be a recovery year for most companies. I was surprised that he was able to give you so much time. Thanks.
I designed an industrial device that required a RPi compute module 3 and it was scheduled for production in 2020. It became impossible to obtain the RPi, even though we were able to source all the other electronic components. We were forced to redesign the whole product with a different processor that we could actually obtain. It was a disaster.
Is it just me or does this guy talk faster than humanly possible? LoL
World's record I think.
Turn on Closed Captioning. LoL
Seriously Chris we love your videos. 👍
So, Pi 5 in 2025! Well that's my interpretation of what Eben said. 🤣 Thanks for posting this. Well handled and presented.
Rest in pieces 😞
This is a great interview. Thanx for shedding some light on the Pi shortages. I'm glad things are starting to normalise. My local licensed supplier has started selling Pi4's again!
Hiya Chris
Here are some video Ideas:
AI:
- Demo of ChatGPT
- Demo of Midjourney
- Explaining AI software
Security:
- Password authentication software. E.g. Google Authenticator or Linux Keyring
- Physical Authenticators like Yubikey / RSA token generator like SecureID
- Explaining PGP
- Digital Signatures / Airgapped devices.
- Explaining MFA
Great content and wish you good luck for the new year.
Cheers,
Dan
Thanks for this. :) Lots of things here I will think about. I covered Yubikeys and related in this video: ruclips.net/video/uYUfOP4UKSM/видео.html
aside from the grey market, it is interesting to find several other mainly chinese based SBC products trying to fill in the gap with the current shortage of raspberry pi products. I purchased a Radxa Rock Pi 5b, which is way more powerfull but more expensive than the retail raspberry pi 4 price. I had never heard of Radxa, but found that they have been in the SBC market for quite some time. It would be great to see SBC market expand to the point where SBC from different manufacturers can have the same level of software support. Rather than Raspberry Pi monopolising the market.
I left the Raspberry Pi computer market, I appreciate this interview but am skeptical concerning projected availability so I migrated to x86 and won’t return to Pi 4
RISC looks interesting to me.
Understandable
Chris an interesting episode (s) would be see how all these commercial buyers use these pi's application wise. Factory visits etc.
Small OEM customer here, we were left hoovering them up from eBay even though we started from a good position and got in touch with the foundation 8 months before our stock was finally exhausted. This experience has meant we are extending our safety stock out many times to what we would have if we were supported. Would love to see the scalpers left holding the bag.
The Raspberry sales people could not keep you stocked? Eben was saying they were working out deals where you would get what you needed regularly rather than buying a huge stock.
@@wayland7150 Wasn't our experience, the whole thing was pretty unpleasant, we only managed to secure OEM stock in the end by exercising contacts in Oxford - which is a depressing state of affairs. I assume they were just overwhelmed. Its pretty unpleasant to be in a position where you can't manufacture a product which has become vital for the future of your business. I think its helpful to just be clear about the reality of the situation, and no hard feelings for Raspberry Pi, at least they wanted to do the right thing - I'm not sure you could say the same for Texas Instruments who seem to just have total contempt for their small customers.
@@edc1569 The PI is aimed at individuals. You can buy a PI and end up running a business based on a product built with it. A larger company would buy the chip itself and probably in such huge volumes that their suppliers would never dare ignore them.
I worked with a small established company and built them a prototype PI product. They ended up not going that way. A relief for me considering how much trouble that product would be in right now.
Not related to this video but a suggestion to do a video on video resolutions, CGA, EGA, VGA, SVGA etc. Great work Christopher.
Good idea -- noted. :)
This pandemic era has been so hard in so many ways. It would really help a lot of people to have Raspberry Pi's to hack on and bring some joy back in our lives but even those have been massively impacted. I'm looking forward to Pi's being highly available again someday. But I also hope some of these other SBC makers can do a better job of creating the full experience like Raspberry Pi does, and that requires as serious an investment in the Operating System as the hardware itself. Raspberry Pi Foundation gets this, which is why we've got a fantastic array of Debian-flavored operating systems officially supported. Other SBC's may require a bit more intermediate to advanced Linux skills to get them working.
Next time we shouldnt let the govt do this to us. COIVD didnt do this, lockdowns did.
The other SBCs have some good hardware, but when you consider the entire ecosystem (OS, applications, accessories, code snippets, published projects), the Raspberry Pi is untouchable.
Oh, Raspberry Pis. How wonderful. Since my first Pi at Christmas 2014, they’ve been a big part of my life, especially before I had a PC. In case anyone is wondering I have a B+, 3B+, 3A+, 4, two Zero Ws, a Zero 2 W and a Pico.
You are officially a Pi enthusiast! :)
Excellent interview, cleared up so many questions from me, thank you Chris.
Chris thanks for the informative video. Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year 🎉.
Thanks! :) And there will be an EC video released on both Chrismas Day and New Year's Day, as both are Sundays.
I plan to be there, providing that I don’t overdo it….😅
If I didn’t see Eben’s name I would thought Jason Statham talking about raspberry pi’s 😊. Great episode, thank you.
Nice interview. Still using my R Pi 2 and would not spend the $$$ for the Pi 4. If I got a Pi 4 what to do with my Pi 2 which still works and even runs Octave?
My first significant use of the Raspberry Pi was in a cluster for the purpose of learning how to manage the work over the different nodes, and to understand the cost to make use of separate nodes.
Another thing that the Pi is good for is to introduce a limit in resource (CPU, Memory, Network) which helps in learning how to handle these constraints.
I didn't know Jason Statham was into computers!
Great video!
or playing a lying capitalist pig
What a fabulous and informative interview. Thanks Chris and Eben. Not meaning to ruin the mood but recent COVID related news from China isn’t great. Of course we need to worry about the people there first, but if the situation isn’t improved, the shortages are here to stay for a while, unfortunately. I hope I am wrong on this.
What I loved learning in this interview is what they meant by “industry customers”.
I guess I’m happy that at least it’s not a Fortune 500 but SMEs.
Thanks for posting ❤
That cat is either a very good manipulator or a unicorn in the business world. I am extremely skeptical by nature, and now I think Raspberry Pi is more awesome than sliced bread. I really appreciate that he did not just shut you down when you asked about what is coming next. I cannot wait to get my hands on a Pi 4 next year. I missed the short window at the beginning and have been waiting it out rather than pay scalper prices, or even scooping one up at retail that someone else needs more than I do. I mean i can run OctoPrint on my 3B+. Great interview, thank you!
I think he's a good egg but he's learned "corporate speak". There's probably reasons not to discuss the Pi 5 timeline, namely, if he says it's coming in July it might mean they've placed some huge backorder for Pi 4's and nobody wants them as they're waiting for Pi 5.
Love to see you stepping out of your wheelhouse and having a guest on a video - great format and very informative.
Thank you Eben for justifying my "supercomputer" Pi clusters that I have. I have mentioned in other channels about my 8 node Pi3 cluster and my 6 node Pi 4 cluster (wanted 8 but unable to reasonably purchase the last 2) and received the typical response. "Why? You can get much better performance from 6 or 8 laptops." My response is always, because I can and it is not quite the same as holding a Pi cluster in one hand.
Do the best ya can with what ya got, we’re not going anywhere and look forward to the future
Thanks for this, Chris,. Very informative. I have always been curious - is there a single component of say a CM4 that is in short supply, or is it multiple components? Is it the CPU? I have always wondered. Thanks again.
As far as I am aware, the biggest issue is the supply of SoCs (the main chip containing the CPU as you say). However, I don't think this is the only supply issue.
What an amazing interview. Well done, Chris and Eben. 💪🙏
This could have been twice as long and I would have still watched the whole thing.
Thank you very much. This clears up a lot of questions I've had about the state of the RPi.
Great interview! This is the first good explanation I've heard explaining the chip shortage. We can really learn a lot listening to a CEO talk about his industry.
Great Interview Chris, good to hear from Eben too it will indeed be great if we can get back to normal levels and hopefully a pi5 too
Good Video Chris, Nice to know that things are begining to return to normal however slowly. On a similar note, I see petrol prices here in Ireland (Kerry) are down to €1.51 and Diesel is down to €1.65 from a high of over €2.05 each not so long ago. So there is hope. I work in automotive electronic manufacture and supply of components has been our greatest problem since just before Feb 2020 with Covid and now Russia-Ukrane
One silver lining as a result of Pi shortages is that I tried a few alternatives. Your channel was a great resource to choose what to try. I used to run Home Assistant on a Pi3, but I now run it on an Odroid N2+ and I'm really happy with it!
Great interview and very interesting. Thank you for sharing this full interview. It helps getting an idea of what's going on behind the scenes regarding supplies etc. And yes, I can see that 2023 is going to be quite the busy year.