Mini computer priced at S$44 sells out in hours

Updated 02:16 PM Mar 01, 2012

 

CAMBRIDGE - The Raspberry Pi, a credit card-sized gadget that was created by volunteers at a charitable organisation, the Raspberry Pi Foundation, was launched yesterday and is aimed at encouraging children to learn how to programme and code.

The introduction of the £22 (S$44) Raspberry Pi computer caused such excitement that the firm was forced to shut down its full website in favour of a more basic version to ration bandwidth. It seems that the Raspberry Pi is attracting a crowd of hackers and 1980s nostalgists.

"It has been six years in the making; the number of things that had to go right for this to happen is enormous. I couldn't be more pleased," Mr Eben Upton, Raspberry Pi Foundation founder, told the BBC.

Launched yesterday via two suppliers, Premier Farnell and RS Components, the Raspberry Foundation announced the former had sold out within hours with the latter adding new orders to a waiting list.

The credit card-sized Raspberry Pi essentially consists of a circuit board, sockets for a keyboard, monitor and Ethernet cable, and an all-in-one "system on a chip" to do all the number crunching, graphics and memory work. The processor within the chip is based on the same ARM architecture found in Apple's second generation iPhone 3G, which was released in 2008.

The ARM architecture can trace its heritage back to the BBC Micro in the 1980s, an initiative which Raspberry Pi seeks to emulate by prompting a similar boom in hobbyist programming.

The Raspberry Pi runs versions of the Linux operating system - stored on an SD card - and by default supports Python, which is seen as a good programming language for novices to tackle. Any other language compatible with the ARM architecture can be used, however.

The device is by no means unique; there are already a range of cheap, bare-bones computers available. But none has generated the buzz around Raspberry Pi, which among others enjoys the backing of Mr David Braben, a British programmer best known for creating the 1980s space adventure video game Elite.

He and the Raspberry Pi team are sincere in their aim to inspire a new generation to take up programming. The question is whether, once the Raspberry Pi reaches the education market it was originally created to serve, the early enthusiasm among Linux hackers will be replicated among schoolchildren more familiar with touch screens than command lines. THE DAILY TELEGRAPH

Source:  www.todayonline.com/TechandDigital/EDC120301-0000168/Mini-computer-priced-at-S$44-sells-out-in-hours