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Is there a Raspberry Pi with 4GB in the works?

Mar 13, 2013 - 1 minute read -

This is not really a news blog, but I spotted something on a recent video titled " Reuters visits the Raspberry Pi factory" at raspberrypi.org.

The picture below is a screenshot from about 2 minutes 17 seconds into the video. It shows a box labelled RASPBERRY PI 4GB U-ICC-005-43 and a photo of a board.

The picture is a bit blurry, but the board appears to show some differences from the three boards I have. I don't think it's a model B1, B2 or A. So what is it?

I've not heard any plans to release a new model with a lot more memory, but given that the increase from 256MB to 512MB was essentially free to end users, it certainly seems a possibility.

Or maybe everyone has already discussed this and I just missed it.

Any thoughts?

Posted by Frank Carver 4gb board memory news reuters revision wales

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Comments

  1. Michael Horne

    Intriguing (he says with an eyebrow raised). The biggest difference I can see... and this doesn't tell us anything... is the lack of the two mounting holes.

  2. Frank

    Since posting I have been wondering if the picture is actually an old picture of an earlier model, perhaps a prototype of the model B1? The label saying 4G is the most intriguing, bit though.

  3. Michael Horne

    Oh, I've just remembered something from Adafruit ( http://www.adafruit.com/blog/2012/10/19/read-the-manufacturing-code-to-identify-the-ram-your-pi-has-without-turning-it-on-piday-raspberrypi-raspberry_pi/) "What you’re looking for are the letters “2G” or “4G” somewhere in that string. The top picture has “4G” written on it: that means 4Gbits, which equals 512MB. ”2G”, which you’ll see in the bottom picture, means 2Gbits, or 256MB. Easy as Pi, when you know how." So, I'm guessing it's the internal Sony factory code for the same thing. For a moment there, that was terribly exciting :o)

  4. Frank

    Hmm. I can see the logic in that, especially for naming memory chips. It's not traditionally how the Raspberry Pi boards have been referred to, though.. See the Farnell Raspberry Pi page for example.. It's a bit surprising that the foundation would leak something as significant as this in a third-party video, so I'm not holding out a lot of hope. But I would like to hear something from "The horse's mouth"...

  5. Andrew Scheller

    Really?? I've already commented about this in the comments of the blog article you've linked to! ;-) (and Liz replied to my comment too) AIUI manufacturers typically deal in megabits/gigabits (since that's what the label on the memory chip actually says - this is true for all memory chips) but retailers deal in megabytes/gigabytes (since that's what the consumer expects). And yes, the image is that of a Beta board - I guess it's simply the first picture that the person who printed out that sign was able to come across. See http://elinux.org/RPi_HardwareHistory and http://www.raspberrypi.org/archives/422 The rest of the video clearly shows Revision2.0 Model B boards being built (apart from the old snippet of Dr. Rob Mullins a few seconds in, also demonstrating a Beta board). Nothing to see here.... move along... ;-)

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