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Raspberry Pi A+ Details Leaked
mikejuk writes Despite trying to keep it secret, a major Raspberry Pi retailer has published some details of the upcoming model A+ Raspberry Pi thanks to a product page that went live early. The board layout looks different and is much smaller than the model A or B+. Judging from the photograph, the A+ board encompasses the four standard mounting holes, which makes it approximately 56x65mm — the model B+ is 56x85mm.
The key improvement is the new 40-pin GPIO socket, which makes the model A+ fully compatible with the HAT expansion standard. This means that any new HAT expansion cards should now work with the A+. It also has what's likely a connector for the yet-unreleased Raspberry Pi touchscreen. Another welcome change is the micro SD slot. One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
The key improvement is the new 40-pin GPIO socket, which makes the model A+ fully compatible with the HAT expansion standard. This means that any new HAT expansion cards should now work with the A+. It also has what's likely a connector for the yet-unreleased Raspberry Pi touchscreen. Another welcome change is the micro SD slot. One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
I know, the Raspberry Pis are not truly powerful, but because of their low price and easy expandability, they are useful for so many creative projects.
For my own use, I was thinking of turning mine into an airplay-compatible receiver (I found that there is software for for that) and built it together with (wifi dongle and a little amp) into a very old radio cabinet. Nice to put in the kitchen.
It's still the same old slow chip designed for phones and tablets of years past. No USB3 and Ethernet sockets there.
The popularity of the arduino shows that CPU performance is not everything. rpi is fast enough to do many tasks, it is small, cheap, widely available, well documented and well supported. That's why its popular.
One downside of the A+ is that it still has only a single USB 2 connector.
There are two down sides worth noting. That's one of them; have they got USB figured out yet? Just one port is bad enough but if they bugger the polyfuses again... But the real problem is the RAM. 512MB is cramped. 256MB is unacceptable.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
What the fuck is wrong with people who think that difference in clock speed over a couple of years is worth anything? The earth is millions of years old. If your imagination fails to think of something interesting to do with well-documented, well-supported technology because it's not precisely what the latest fashion demands, your contribution will be worthless.
Raspberry Pi A+ is too late. There is much better alternative for DIY embedded purposes - Arietta G25 (http://www.acmesystems.it/arietta). No kernel blobs needed, much smaller (53mm x 25mm) and comparable price.
The processor in the existing rpi is so slow compared to other (even similarly clocked) modern arm cores that one might seriously wonder if Intel isn't paying these folks to sabotage arm in the minds of developers.
Raspberry Pi is not a product that follows the latest computing advancements but it is about keeping a stable platform. A program written for C64 works on another C64. A program written for Raspberry Pi works on another Raspberry Pi.
It would make cooperative education and hobby projects more difficult if people had to continuously negotiate about "is this the 700MHz or 1000MHz version we are talking about". It's more straightforward to have a common ground.
Of course there's plenty of other ARM boards with the latest hot chips if that's what your project requires. :)
Well documented, is it now? Where's the rest of the SOC datasheet?
Name those boards, or didn't happen.
"Cock Up Your Beaver" does not mean what you think. This sig is intended to clog filters and annoy do-gooders
It's also about being cheap. The Pi was expressly designed for use as an educational platform for use in schools. Children break everything, so the pi needs to be cheap enough that a school can keep replacing all the ones that get snapped/squished/thrown/scratched/smashed.
Actually they have made pretty good progress in this area. Ahead of most (maybe all) other arm boards and most PCs.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/ope...
http://www.raspberrypi.org/a-b...
http://www.raspberrypi.org/qua...
Though i suspect when most people say well documented they mean that pretty much whatever you want to do with a pi you can easily find good tutorials. Want to hook up some electronics to so you can read/control them over a network, raspberrypi is probably the easiest (and cheapest) option.
Interesting comment about 4 Pis dying.
Did you use the same power supply for all 4?
The HAT sounds very much like it would become very, very useful. Automatically installed avanced I/O cards under Linux.
Easier than Groove or similar under Arduino.
I can't complain.
(I currently use two Raspberry - one Razberry and one Raspbmc. One for controlling LED strips would be great.)
They still spread the ports along two sides sides of the board! Put then on one side people and make the cases a lot easer to to make.
See my blog http://ilovecookes.blogspot.com/ for light hearted technical information.
I've mistreated the hell out of mine and they both live. One is now missing the big capacitor, C6 I believe, and it still works fine. I suppose if you step on it then it might fail.
There is also no word on what the device's power consumption is, but it has to be lower than the model B+ because it is basically the same design minus the Ethernet chip.
These no denying, the A+ is cute. RPI fans will stock up on them for more interesting projects that are slightly smaller than before (little sarcasm).
My only gripe, CPU is still the same, no USB3. Its as if the Raspberry Foundation made a great product a few years ago and are scared to try something new.
Just wish they would move on to another project with current/next gen tech, instead of rehashing the same old tech that doesnt really benefit anyone.
However, my Model B 256mb still runs great, so no reason to buy another model yet.
Upgrade the CPU and i'll buy one. Each to their own i guess.
Well supported? What? Seriously, what are you talking about? A bunch of random idiots on some forum that don't know jack shit about the hardware or the software does not make it well supported.
Just stop trying to pretend the Pi is awesome. It was an awesome idea before it came out, everything since then has been horrible. Production delays, lack of supply (Seriously, how the fuck can you not meet demand for years on end), bad hardware design, closed source GPU blobs that only work on specific linux distros and NOTHING ELSE.
Its crap. Wake up and smell the shit on your nose.
So cus' the thing doesn't do exactly what you want, it's bad?
It's not the holy grail of anything, but it's available and it does its just just fine.
Admit nothing. Deny Everything. Make Counter-accusations.
There's a lot of overlap between those constraints. Cheap doesn't just mean cheap to buy, it means cheap to replace. And that means that when you break one, if the exact model doesn't exist anymore then you need to be able to run everything that was working on the old one on a newer model. The advantage of the RPi over more powerful ARM boards is that it comes with that guarantee - the A+ will run everything (including the same OS image) as the A and B.
The hypothetical 700MHz vs 1GHz issue that the grandparent talks about isn't that much of a problem. More importantly, a new SoC would likely be dual (or quad or octo) core and would be ARMv7, not ARMv6. That's a big change. I expect that the RPi will skip ARMv7 entirely and that eventually there will be an ARMv8 model (possible ARMv8.1 / ARMv8.2), but the jump to 64-bit gives a good excuse for needing a new OS image.
Disclaimer: I work a couple of floors below several of the RPi Foundation, but the only thing that they've told me about their future plans is that they have some. Everything in this post is uninformed guesswork.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The CPU will stay the same until A) Broadcom have recouped the cost of designing the chip in the first place, and B) until they design a replacement, which may be never, since the current chip showed there's no market for one.
Some rumours about a $5 price drop to just $20....
"One downside of the A+ is that it still has fewer features than the B+ version."
Ken
A few basic tasks. Saying many is pushing the definition of many.
I invite you to actually go and see what people have used the device for. You're talking about a full Linux computer with GPIO, SPI, UART, Network, USB, HDMI, Audio, and composite out, not to mention the many optional addon cards. If you think it's capable of only a few basic tasks then you are showing an incredible lack of creativity.
it is small
Compared to what? Its not really that small, there are certainly smaller in the same class and for less money. Realistically though, for experimentation its exactly the wrong size. For requiring a pin header to do anything, it should be way smaller, and its too small to do anything directly on the board. They picked essentially the exact wrong size.
In its class, its not that cheap. Its average at best, a bit pricey if you have to wait for it since you can get cheaper ones on a slow boat from china for better prices. This comes up every time some fanboy tries to make out like the Raspberry Pi is worth a shit. Its not. Stop trying to pretend its got good value. Its not the cheapest and the hardware is fundamentally flawed from the start because apparently making a minor rev to the board takes 5 years or more.
There's nothing cheaper in it's speed class available from any electronics store. Importing something on a slow boat from China doesn't compare, especially if it lacks the features and support of this product. As for hardware being fundamentally flawed... the fact that it has remained a stable platform shows how good the hardware is save for the initial poly fuse issue which was fixed in the second batch.
Is it? After waiting several years for it to finally get to the point where it wasn't constantly out of stock everywhere, I moved on.
How's the ebola risk going in that 3rd world wasteland you live in? No seriously there were supply issues for the very first batch. Element14 then had them in stock all over the world within a month. I assume you gave up after a day or live on the moon. Either way that's not something anyone can help you with, save for maybe a slow boat from china.
well documented
Bullshit. The GPU is STILL locked down, and thats the part of the device thats actually useful. Broadcom released some specs a while back about the GPU that everyone went ape shit over ... but wasn't useful for actually doing anything and nothing at all actually came to fruition from it.
And the lack of an open source driver for the GPU means precisely dick when the entire world has a massive community developing for the platform. Every function of the device is well documented including how to use the GPU and access any and all I/O functions of the chip. Somehow the locked down GPU hasn't stopped the device being used in media centres to decode high-def video, or in arcade cabinets playing games at full speeds. But clearly this function must be important to you so why not buy something else and leave the rest of us alone.
Well supported? What? Seriously, what are you talking about? A bunch of random idiots on some forum that don't know jack shit about the hardware or the software does not make it well supported.
You didn't need to say this. We already realised you had absolutely no idea long before you spurted out this crap.
I thought the Raspberry Pis were meant to be named after BBC Micro models. We got the Model B and Model A (the latter of which mimicked the Model A BBC Micro in being less popular than the Model B), then the Model B+, which mimicked the short-lived improvement to the original BBC B.
;-)
There was never a BBC Micro Model A+, though. The next one in the series should be a Raspberry Pi Master Series, with numeric keypad.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Many tasks,
http://hackaday.com/tag/raspbe...
http://makezine.com/category/e...
Seems to me like thousands of people are finding interesting things to do. Of course it is not fast enough for everything, but nor is my i7 laptop, or the 48core server box I use at work.
Small. Ok, that's relative. Its been fine for my uses, smaller than the beagleboard and mini-itx boards I used before. The A+ is even smaller. Interested to know what project you are doing where the pi is too big and too slow, what do you use instead?
Cheap. sorry if $25/$35 is too expensive. Its a quarter the price of the beaglebaord that I used before. Maybe you can find something cheaper for your specific task.
Widely available. In the UK there are several high street shops with it in stock, and lots of online retailers.
Documentation. Personally GPU docs don't interest me (though they are now released, so its the most open arm SoC). When I have wanted to use the pi in a project I have found lots of documentation and tutorials to help me.
Well supported. 2.5 years after release they are still doing regular software updates, including big things like wayland support. Compared to lots of hardware that is released with some old distro image that never gets any updates.
So yes the raspberrypi is awesome. It lets lots of people do interesting things at a good price. Sure for certain things an atmega, beaglebaord, banana pi, gumstix, galileo, an old pc or something else might be better.
I have never witnessed such reordering. Maybe you simply wrote a first post and then in your current page it appeared at the first comment, but in reality other comments were already posted, but you didn't see them until you reloaded the page.
Hmm, C6 seems to indeed be the main smoothing cap.
Yes that's what I read too. Apparently it's there in case there are problems with poor power supplies. Mine has worked fine in the weeks since I broke the cap off.
"A program written for C64 works on another C64"
Not always. There were enough differences between the revisions to make some programs break. Then you add the C128 and it also added some differences.
The various C64s had different CPUs with different undocumented opcodes, and there were two revisions of the video chip and two of the sound chip (if not more).
Mostly random stuff.
They can't have been trying to keep it secret very hard, cause they've been waving the boards about in TV interviews for a month at least.
Sounds like you need this if you want to blow $200 for a real desktop like system. Sure some emedded uses would call for an atom.
For building robots and doing simple things an ARM is fine and most importantly cheap! Folks still use XP machines with 512 megs of ram and cpus not much faster to this day. Postgresql, php, image recognition, and other clients tools ran fine on a pentium III. He'll Debian demoed a 1000 users with apache on a 75 mhz pentium back in the day!
These are not made to run VMware and virtual ized oses and video editing and compiling code. That's what a workstation like my i7 is for.
http://saveie6.com/
It is garbage because a very closed CPU is used as an educational platform without datasheet availability.
This Broadcom SOC is great for mass-produced routers, bad for sharing with people trying to learn how Linux boots, learning assembly and possibly advancing to their own RTOS. I'm aware of the measly peripheral datasheet sections that are available online, but for Atmel and NXP chips one has to read a LOT more to make basic hardware level programs (how are the VICs nested, timing and boot issues/settings, other exceptions made by Broadcom i their ARM11 implementation etc).
Consistency is unimportant if youre giving people a board with the OS pre-installed, the kernel can handle different CPUs while users use different programs. But if you want to learn a bit more and go lower level (for example from Arduino), you're screwed by Broadcom SOC's severe lack of documentation. And forget about learning to code for the GPU.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Finally we know why Ebon and Co stomped on the Odroid-W.
It happens all the time. The first post doesn't keep its position if its rating is low enough to expunge it from the first 50 comments loaded. Comments which are loaded with the "Load all comments" button always appear below the initially loaded comments, even if they were posted earlier.
I think he was being metaphorical. It's more like "Is it the one with a shitachi KZ415 chipset or the one with a bogocorp 3712A, which both have exactly the same PLU/SKU, unless it was shipped from Hungary on a Friday in which case..."
WiFI & TV cards seem very prone to this.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Hahah yeah, I had a good laugh at that. The Commodore/MOS semi folks did something incredible stuff, but it was often really dodgy. Bil Herd, the lead designer on the Commodore 128 talks about that in a brilliant and funny 2 hour interview.
@BitZtream
Your post has a number of glaring inaccuracies, ones that could easily have been corrected with minimal Googling, or had you known any thing about what you are attempting to write about.
It is widely available, and has been for well over a year. If you have a product that isn't meeting demand, you don't sell 4M devices - in 2 years. You can buy one next day delivery from dozens of different suppliers around the world.
Documentation. For 99.999% of people, there is perfectly good documentation, and for those of a particularly masochistic bent, you have the full GPU documentation to play with. As for everything else, well, it's Linux - how much more documentation do you need? Raspberry specific stuff if fairly well dealt with ton the Pi site, but Google will almost always find you answers - its all out there, if you care to actually look.
It IS the cheapest device you can get with the spec. That's pretty clear. And I don't count devices that you find on some knock off Chinese supplier with no support whatsoever. That's not cheap, that's throwing money away.
You do the huge number of people who give time on Raspberry Pi forums, or YouTube, or Blog about the device ,by calling them all idiots. They clearly are not, and that's easy to discover. Of course, there clearly are idiots out there, and some of them try and answer questions they shouldn't - you for example - but hey, name me a product where that doesn't happen..
There are a number of OS's available on the device - Raspbian, Arch, RISCOS, PLan9 and some baremetal stuff going on. That's fairly good support. The Foundation is continually updating the kernel, there are various projects funded by the Foundation to make the experience better. That's better support than Beagle and the like. But then, after selling 4M devices compared to 150k BBB's I guess they have the money to spend...and they are spending it, on education and improvement.
The capabilities of the Pi and the breadth of projects that engenders are well known. Try looking past the end of your nose. No, it's not a panacea - it was never meant to be, but to say its only capable of basic tasks is so far wrong you clearly cannot use Google.
Basically, your entire post is complete bullshit.
You know what? Datasheet availability for education make no fucking difference. If you are trying to teach how linux boots, use a different platform (and try GPU programming on your desktop if its so important - which it isn't). This strawman argument comes up all the time, and its pathetic. You really DONT NEED THE FUCKING DATASHEETS to teach children because children ARE NOT FUCKING INTERESTING IN THAT SHIT. Even grad level stuff ISNT INTERESTING IN THAT SHIT.
It's completely irrelevant. The number of people who actually need/want to know that stuff is insignificant compared with the number of people who need a basic grounding in computing.
And of course, people have got their own OS's running on the Pi, can program baremetal, can run interrupt routines so you are talking shit anyway.
Why do people who are so far behind the latest progress feel the need to slag an educational charity who are actually doing stuff to educate?
It is garbage because a very closed CPU is used as an educational platform without datasheet availability.
That would depend on what the education is about. If it's about teaching kids to program in Python, then the lack of datasheets is a non-issue. Even if you wanted to hack the Linux kernel, 90% of the code is architecture independent.
I was under the impression that the Pi is aimed at introductory learners. That is people who will be writing their first "hello world" program and new to the concept of variables. It is cheap as possible so children can buy and play with them.
Even when I kid and learned programming on the Apple II E one did not start with assemble as one's first language and write an operating system as ones first program.
By the time one is advanced enough to want to learn some assemble langue and alter Linux at the level of detail requiring data sheets for the processor, one probable has a target processor in mind. Or at the very least an application which would drive the process of selecting the best hardware. In either case, it is probable the time to speed the money to buy products/tools for professionals not an educational item made for a child's budget.
There were several kinds of USB issue. Those related to USB power and polyfuses have been remedied. The B+ (and now A+) power circuitry is now done properly, not a cheap hack like on the models B and A.
But the biggest USB issue of all remains and will probably never be solved, because it is a hardware problem deep within the Broadcom BCM2835 SoC. This SoC contains just a partial USB controller which requires the CPU to handle in software some of the USB functionality that is missing in the hardware. Unfortunately the CPU cannot provide the required 1ms realtime response to USB events when it is busy, and so USB events are occasionally lost. That wreaks havoc on mice and keyboards, producing stuck keys, dangling or missed mouse clicks, and on the B/B+ also contributing to Ethernet packet loss because Ethernet runs over USB.
That fundamental USB problem isn't really fixable except by using a different SoC.
Ok you hate it, we get it. What would you suggest then?
"lack of supply" LOL
You can buy the Pi by the pallet load if you want. I've just picked a random idiot. It's you! Congrats.
So why does a 10 year old need a CPU datasheet? No one in the past has ever learnt anything on a purely opensource platform so why the issue with the SoC on the Pi? I've learnt plenty using a PC. No idea how the CPU works. Don't need to know. Is the device you are using now 100% open source? No. Of course it isn't.
I don't think they will jump directly to ARMv8 because of the price point. Unless they wait 3 or 4 years for their next update, I don't see ARMv8 SoCs being cheap enough to use.
Mada mada dane.
You managed to troll a bunch of people. Happy now?
Since the beginning of the Pi, a big problem has been its lack of an audio-in jack. Instead tinkering about with that has required us to fiddle around with USB-based audio interfaces. Ick.
A couple of nitpicks on your post.
Documentation. For 99.999% of people, there is perfectly good documentation,
The docs are pretty poor though, for example there is no proper documentation on the electrical characteristics of the IO pins.
and for those of a particularly masochistic bent, you have the full GPU documentation to play with.
Depends how you define "GPU", theres docuementation for the 3D core but not for many other blocks.
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
there were supply issues for the very first batch. Element14 then had them in stock all over the world within a month
and the second batch. And element14 reports them as "in stock" when what actually happens (or did back then) is the order was actually forwarded along to another warehouse. so in actuality they had 0 in stock, but were reporting having them in stock to capture sales. If I'd waited a month, I'd have bought something else. element14 can DIAF.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Banana Pi is a much better choice, dual core CPU, 1g Ram, 1g Ethernet , Sata, power button, reset button, same gpio , same price level:
http://www.bananapi.com
I switched to banana pi from RPi
Could not agree more, rpi is fit for purpose. The company where I work has displays in their branches - before the rpi they were buying PC's with multiple display cards - with the rpi they glue it to the back of the TV, power it from the tv usb port and it costs a tenth of what the PC used to cost. They literally bought out the entire countries stock of rpi's.
There are three kinds of falsehood: the first is a 'fib,' the second is a downright lie, and the third is statistics.
The A53 cores (the 64-bit equivalent to the A7) are already starting to get pretty cheap. I wouldn't be surprised if they become cheap enough for the RPi Master (or whatever they call it) some time next year. Especially as they can guarantee that whichever chip goes in the RPi is going to have a lot of third-party software spending on it. That is very valuable to SoC makers: knowing that anyone who wants to do some embedded project can already get well-tested and well-supported off-the-shelf toolchains and operating systems for their part.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Beaglebone Black does not cost 4 times more (anymore?), last time I've checked it was about 2 times more expensive.(about 60 Euro for BB vs 30 Euro for RPI)
I had a beagleboard http://beagleboard.org/beagleb... , $125, though about £120 GBP to order in the UK. So switching to the pi gave me something smaller, cheaper, more reliable (I had various issues with the USB on the BB), with ethernet and accessible GPIOs.
Beaglebone Black is quite nice, and closer in price to Pi, but I have not personally made any projects where it would be an advantage over a Pi. I for the Pi that I use as a desktop (mostly with just a bunch of terminals SSHed to big machines), it might be a bit faster, but I'd need to add a USB hub to connect a mouse and keyboard.
I've never understood the British use of the word 'mains' when talking about household wiring; it seems to imply there was / is 'secondary' or 'auxilliary' wiring.
pretty much everything from olimex. faster, equally cheap, and what not.
The payoff of the A+ board is not the price. Its supposed to use significantly less power, which would make it more desirable if you needed to leave a remote device alone for a longer period of time, or place it on a drone, where the battery would need to be lighter, or needed to solar power the device on a small cell, and have it run overnight on the rechargeable battery. Still can't beat the power consumption of an arduino, but there's probably applications (drive a webcam) which the arduino can't meet with its CPU.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
For what it's worth, I have a first-run model B (256mb RAM) and yes the supply was short back then, I ordered it at launch (Feb) and got it in July, but i expected as much so it was never an issue. Last year I got a later model B (512mb RAM), no wait at all.
:)
I've never had any problems with either; the older one runs as a web and VoIP server, the second is my used by my 7 year old to play with Scratch. I have never regretted either purchase, although I will admit running Scratch can tax the Pi, but it is cheap enough to introduce my kid to Linux without making it their main machine.
For goodness sake, I have a 13year old desktop sporting a 1Ghz Celeron with 512MB ram that is hooked up to a tv and serves as a media player for my youngest. If you can't find a use for a cheap linux box with a somewhat modern GPU, stop whining and use Google.... or just don't buy it.
I was thinking that the Raspberry Pi would make a great calculator (with the inclusion of Mathematica and GNU tools), but there are no good cases to achieve this.
I agree that not many people will need the documentation, but as a matter of principle, I think it is better to have a better documented chip for an educational project. The BBB uses an TI Sitara, which is extremely well documented. It also has the additional benefit of having two real time microcontrollers onboard which can be programmed which a very nice assembly language. I have been playing a lot with the BBB and really like it. It is however significantly more expensive that the RPi.
It has been sitting on the shelves of a local MicroCenter for years now. Get over yourself. I never had any trouble getting one.
A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
Unix is not a realtime operating system. Likewise, normal mainline Linux is not a realtime operating system either.
Every systems designer creating a board for Linux would be expected to know this, so picking a SoC that requires realtime response from a mainline Linux kernel was a severe design mistake by the board's designers.
You can call the inherent USB problems a fault with the SoC or a fault with the designer's choice of SoC, but playing with words won't make the problem go away. The undeniable fact is that this problem exists, has affected countless users of Raspberry Pi, was confirmed and explained by RPF hardware developers in the extremely long "Elephant" thread on the RPF forum, and is still in that very same state today because it is unfixable in practice.
Every use of USB that involves USB Split Transactions is affected by this fault and will see intermittent dropping of USB events. If your board doesn't exhibit any USB problems then it's not that your board doesn't have the fault (all BCM2835 have it), but simply because you are not currently using USB Split Transactions.
I'd say that 99.9% is about right, so I was a bit off with my 99.999. That 4000 people from the 4M devices sold for whom the docs are inadequate to the point of not being able to complete a project.
As for GPU, yes it does depend on the definition. For example the camera ISP is undocumented (but can be used via libraries as can everything else), as are some other areas, although the Foundation are attempted to get permission from Broadcom to release more.
It's a trade off that you have hit there. Cost vs everything. Is is better to have full docs, most of which would never be used, or a cheaper device? Or is community support more important?
School always need cheaper. They also need hand holding.