When the Raspberry Pi 5 SBC was launched final yr, it got here in 4 and eight GB RAM variants, which presently retail from round $80 USD and €90 for the 8 GB variant to $60 and €65 for the 4 GB variant. Now Raspberry Pi has announced the launch of a 3rd Raspberry Pi 5 variant: a 2 GB model which additionally contains a new stepping of the BCM2712 SoC. This could promote for about $50 USD and have the D0 stepping that purportedly strips out quite a lot of the ‘darkish silicon’ that’s not used on the SBC.
These unused die options are possible because of the Broadcom SoCs used on Raspberry Pi SBCs being successfully recycled set-top field SoCs and related. Which means that some options that make sense in a set-top field or such don’t make sense for a general-purpose SBC, however nonetheless take up die area and enhance the manufacturing defect charge. The D0 stepping thus would appear to be based mostly round an optimized die, with as solely doable detrimental being the next energy density because of a (in all probability) smaller die, making energetic cooling much more vital.
As for whether or not 2 GB is sufficient to your functions is dependent upon your use case, however knocking $10 off the worth of an RPi 5 could possibly be price it for some. Maybe extra fascinating is that this identical D0 stepping of the SoC is prone to make it to the opposite RAM variants as effectively. We’re awaiting benchmarks to see what the sensible distinction is between the present C1 and new D0 steppings.
Because of [Mark Stevens] for the tip.
