
A cheaper, smaller Raspberry Pi 3 is now available - gmiller123456
https://www.engadget.com/2018/11/15/a-cheaper-smaller-raspberry-pi-3-is-now-available/
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Ixio
The linked blog post [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-raspberry-
pi-3-...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-raspberry-
pi-3-model-a/) has more info and is interesting.

In it they say "Back in March, we explained that the 3+ platform is the final
iteration of the “classic” Raspberry Pi", I've tried finding the corresponding
blog post but didn't have any luck. Does anyone know where I can read more
about this ? I'm interested in hearing more about their need for "new core
silicon, on a new process node, with new memory technology".

~~~
happycube
Basically they're reached the limits of what you can do with a 40nm process
within (well, mostly) the power/thermal limits of USB microB with a basic heat
spreader. While the ARM A53 cluster would almost certainly be available in
smaller nodes, the uncore has sort of outlived it's welcome anyway.

~~~
StudentStuff
This line of chips from Broadcomm can only support 1GB of Ram, a hard limit
for what type of applications one can put on it. Meanwhile, other SBCs have
mainline kernel support now and boast 2GB or even 4GB of Ram.

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tantalor
I gave up on using raspberry pi after it destroyed several expensive micro SD
cards. The device is amazing, but the dependence on brittle micro SD is a deal
breaker for me. I just want to boot over USB with no micro SD. Have they
solved this issue?

~~~
learc83
About 5 years ago, I was running a startup that had Raspberry Pis (we really
need a better plural) deployed to numerous customers, and SD card corruption
was a big problem. If I remember correctly the problem generally happened when
there was a power loss during writes to the SD card.

I ended up creating a RAM disk and only writing to that. Once every 5 minutes
or so I would flush anything that needed to be permanent to a partition on the
SD card. And once every hour I'd save anything really important to an s3
bucket. SQLite also performed much better running in memory than it did
directly from on the SD card.

That mostly solved the problem, but I still shipped every unit with an extra
SD card and instructions on swapping it out just in case.

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zck
> ...Raspberry Pis (we really need a better plural)...

Raspberry Tau comes to mind.
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposals](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_\(geometry\)#Tau_proposals)).
It could mean just two Raspberry Pis, or I guess any amount more than one.

~~~
babypuncher
Raspberry Pii

~~~
ColanR
Raspberry Pi^N

~~~
reaperducer
Raspberry πs?

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akoster
Link from raspberrypi.org site: [https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-
raspberry-pi-3-...](https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-product-raspberry-
pi-3-model-a/)

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melling
Intel should lend a hand in getting Thunderbolt 3 on one of these:

[https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intel-to-make-
thunde...](https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/05/intel-to-make-
thunderbolt-3-royalty-free-in-bid-to-spur-adoption/)

Smaller devices could use a smaller and faster port.

~~~
nerdponx
What about USB-C?

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ken
That's the physical connector used by Thunderbolt 3.

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emilfihlman
The sd card is the biggest weakness of all SBCs.

EMMC, wireless and some way to connect a camera (usb or CSI) would be perfect.

~~~
FactolSarin
This. I wonder how much it'd cost for them to just add a bit of on-board
storage.

~~~
harperlee
The now defunct CHIP computer costed 9$ and had on-board storage, so there you
have a cap.

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makomk
That used raw NAND flash, which is kind of nasty. I'm not sure they ever quite
got it working right before they went under.

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mattthebaker
Raw NAND is highly preferable to SD or USB drives. You can at least have wear
leveling in the OS/FS. SD/USB are bad because most have dumb controllers and
just rewrite a page when it changes. Raw NAND is also consistent and meets
datasheet specs, whereas SD you never know what you are getting.

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garysahota93
This board has been extremely versatile and super affordable for a long time
now. I'm really happy they made this new version. I think it's sleek nature
will absolutely come in handy in some of the projects that I am going to be
working on in the future. Great job!

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cabaalis
> Plus, like its sibling, the whole board is certified as a radio module under
> FCC rules, which will significantly reduce the cost of conformance testing
> Raspberry Pi–based products.

The problem I encountered was not FCC testing of the device, but that I could
not mass-manufacture my pi-based prototype because the chips required huge
bulk quantity purchasing to be feasible. We had to develop a brand new device
based off beaglebone that was more available for a run of 10-50k. (I'll never
do that again, either..)

~~~
styfle
That’s a good point. The Pi is really meant for quick prototypes or teaching
students, not enterprise work.

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coob
Does anyone make a board like a Pi but with a flagship smartphone quality SoC?

~~~
jandrese
I occasionally have a fantasy about Apple putting their latest A-X chip on a
SBC form factor for $50 and open sourcing the drivers and letting people go
nuts with it.

It's one of those things that will never ever happen because we don't live in
a perfect universe.

~~~
downrightmike
Maybe for $1000, everything closed source and locked down.

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jandrese
I thought the monkey paw on that deal would be that the SBC comes with only a
single USB-C port for all of its I/O, including power.

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rb808
1 USB port should be the standard. the 2x2 port connectors are huge.

Is there a mini RJ45 connector yet? That would benefit from shrinking too.

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ben174
Seems we could probably lose the RJ45 at this point.

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jedieaston
Schools (at least around here in a pretty good school district) have terrible
Wi-Fi, and if the school supports BYOD then the APs are commonly at capacity.
It’s much easier to use Ethernet if you want to get some Pis for a classroom,
since the teacher can just hook them up to a switch and not have to think
about whether the Wi-Fi is good, sharing PSKs (or having every kid log in to
802.1x), making sure that the devices all get on the same subnet so that its
easy to communicate with them, etc. And the Pi is aimed at schools, so that is
what they will think about. Especially in lower-class areas I wouldn’t be
surprised if they don’t have Wi-Fi on the entire campus (although in the US,
we have eRate to help with that).

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kumarvvr
Has anyone used an RPi for commercial products?? Im interested to use it for a
project that I want to spin off commercially. Just curious.

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epynonymous
seems like only 1 usb port compared to 4, no ethernet port, half the memory of
the 3 b+. to me this competes more with the pizero

~~~
tjoff
Seems like a good fit for something like a 3d-printer, for which the pizero
was a bit slow.

But I will always miss wired ethernet.

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epynonymous
another complaint of the pizero is the mini-hdmi, i dont own a single one of
these cables, i think you're right in that the pizero cpu is much slower

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Florin_Andrei
It's just not practical to put a full size HDMI socket on a tiny board like
that.

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rbirkby
Although the 3a+ is great, the ram is underwhelming. Would love a “3a+ Master”
with the exact specs of the 3a+ but with 2GB RAM.

~~~
Narishma
Not possible. The SoC only supports up to 1GB of RAM.

