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Interviews: Ask Raspberry Pi Founder and CEO Eben Upton a Question
It's been roughly five years since we last interviewed the founder and CEO of Raspberry Pi (Trading) Ltd., Eben Upton. Eben currently serves as a technical director and ASIC architect for Broadcom. He founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation in 2009 to develop and market a $25 microcomputer for education. He has also founded two successful mobile games and middleware companies, Ideaworks 3d Ltd. and Podfun Ltd., and served a Director of Studies for computer science at St. John's College, Cambridge. Ebon has agreed to take some time out of his busy schedule and answer some of your questions.
You may ask Eben as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them to Eben Upton himself. (Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.)
Go on, don't be shy!
You may ask Eben as many questions as you'd like, but please, one per comment. We'll pick the very best questions and forward them to Eben Upton himself. (Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next.)
Go on, don't be shy!
How do you spell your name? Eben or Ebon?
Are you concerned that your inexpensive computer will cause many millions of people to lose their jobs to automation and be unable to support themselves, forcing them into a life of crime to support their families and a bleak future for all of us?
Could you share with us any more details about the new, smaller version of the Raspberry Pi 3 that is rumored to be released this quarter?
the RE'd open source VC4 firmware, once feature complete, will finally quell open source advocates dislike of your claims that the Pi was a 'fully' open source system by allowing them to run their own software at all levels of Pi operation? If so, do you foresee any changes being made by broadcom in future revisions of the VC4 that will 'intentionally' break compatibility with the initialization code or see keyed firmware signing required at some or all levels of the Pi hardware, as has happened on Intel, AMD, and a variety of other ARM SoCs?
What do you think about RISC-V?
Will each form factor get updated over time? I'm talking about the A+ and especially the Zero.
Currently, vendors are having to limit availability due to supply shortage. Is it intended that this will not be the case in the future, or is the foundation concentrating on other things?
I recall years ago researching and seeing a post, I think by a broadcom employee, suggesting it would be fairly trivial if anyone were interested to have them modify the GPU firmware to support basic signed bootloading (keys and their management under full control of the device owner of course). I wonder if anything came of that, or could possibly come sooner rather than later (hint hint).
I can't quickly find the thread, but here is boot sequence outline from stackexchange
http://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/8480
... with a date with your sister Kate...
What do you regret the most/what would you change if you were to do it all over?
Thank you for creating a such an awesome and useful little computer.
I've used Pi's to do everything from automatically watering my xmas tree to teaching a fourth grade class basic electronics to doing remote backups of my data (with a pi in my house and one far away at my buddies.)
That last operation suffers greatly from the lack of ram resources on a raspberry pi. My "pi" in the sky remote backup node has an SO-DIMM slot on the back I could stick a 8 or 16GB so-dimm in. 1-4 SATA ports so I write faster and a gigE ethernet interface.
I understand that you're under financial pressures to keep the cost down, but I see a real market for a Pi 3+.
Also, follow slashdotters... if there's a platform out there that accomplishes this that's not a proprietary NAS let me know. I've also investigated several microST motherboards but I don't want to have to deal with a "real" power supply, etc.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
What do you think of systemd and Raspbian's half implementation of it?
Does Windows 10 on the Rapsberry Pi have a real chance?
This place is a ghost town, you know.
I own all of the major Raspberry Pi hardware versions that have been released. I love them all. I only have one wish. Faster I/O. Will the next hardware release address this? USB 3.0, 1Gbps NIC, faster SD card interface. Any one of these upgrades would be great. All of them? Would be awesome! :)
The RaspberryPi is quite famously manufactured in the UK. Is this still a long term strategy or have recent events such as the Brexit and the rise of Pi competitors forced a review of the future of manufacturing in the UK?
Will wake-on-LAN be available on the RPi platform someday?
How do you make electronics in Britain that isn't shit?
Do you think you could revive Lucas?
Some of us are still waiting for a low-cost 4 GB + 4 Core embedded device with a Real-Time-Clock ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Pi was designed as a cheap-as-chips (pun unintended) computer for classroom education. Obviously since then it's been put to a myriad of Other Uses. Which of these have struck you as the "best" or most unexpected usage outside the classroom?
The latest model is impressive, but given the plummeting cost of hardware (thank you, smartphones), what features would you like to see in The Next Pi? More/faster CPU cores, better wireless, gigabit ethernet, USB 3.0 support, ???
Why did you choose such a closed POS SOC to base the board on?
What are the challenges in bringing a lower power display (e-ink or otherwise) to market?
Plans for non usb based networking?
I love the RPi, I own all models and use the RPI3 as media center. Thansk for all your hard work in making the impossible possible!
My main wish: more memory (4 Gb on-board) or the option to expand the memory.
It's worth noting that at least some official Raspberry Pis are/were made in China.
As the owner of many PIs (1,2,&3) I have one request. Add a SATA port. This would solve boot time, loading time, and storage issues preventing the PI from completely replacing a desktop.
Outside of that, perfect product!
To what extent do you take power consumption into account when designing new models – should we expect new models to continue to use more power as they get more powerful or do you plan to try to keep them below a certain level?
Feel free to leave your suggestions for who Slashdot should interview next
You know, this site really needs to have a Q&A session, interview, whatever with the site trolls. That would be pretty cool and a big break from the status quo. Get the moo cow guy, the appy apps guy, apk, GNAA, etc all together and ask questions. I bet that would produce some hilarious questions and answers.
Did you target the credit card size from the get-go or was it more of a happy coincidence that the Pi ended up that size?
I much admire the Raspberry Pi project, philosophy and products With the luxury of perfect hindsight, what would you have done differently if you could go back in time?
Since the Pi products make computing accessible for most everyone, would it be worthwhile to develop an all-in-one PI like the One Laptop Per Child concept?
A lot of Pi users such as myself have experienced bricked SD cards after running a Pi continuously for weeks or months. SD cards, even premium ones, are not terribly robust when used to store a root file system that experiences lots of small writes. Disabling logging helps by reducing the number of writes to the card, but isn't a good solution if you need logs. Have you looked at any alternative storage options for the root file system?
Since raspberry Pi 2, the CPU hasn't been the weakest link, but then my use of the device isn't classroom, but home server, or connected to a TV. But I was very disappointed in the improvements in the 3 as it addressed non issues.
The single USB 2.0 bus really limit things. All IO sharing ~35MB/s . Even a single USB 3.0 bus would be 10x increase. After that it's RAM. I know these are constraints based on the chips you can get cheap, but any chance of seeing an upgrade?
The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive
What is your "answer" for Parallela?
* Parallella: The Most Energy Efficient Supercomputer on the Planet - Ray Hightower of WisdomGroup
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
There are some early schematics but none for the RPi Zero nor RPi 3; what's up with that?
As per the official comments in https://www.raspberrypi.org/magpi/pi-3-interview/ "USB and PXE network boot" when will the updated Firmware/BIOS image be ready that will enable Raspberry-Pi 3 MMC cardless PXE booting ?
Keep up the great work,
Thanks
Raspberry Pis and most other hobbyist-SBCs are based around various ARM SoCs, but as a whole the big picture is horribly fragmented, with this board having slightly different bootup-sequence than that board, requiring board-specific steps in software, and this board having totally closed GPU and video-engine software and that board having some parts of them open, and this board supporting VDPAU or such for video-decoding and that board using OMX, cameras being only useable with specific boards, even though they share the exact same CSI-connector and so on -- how high do you value the idea of standardizing some of these things, and do you believe there will be any progress worth mentioning in the next 10 or 20 years?
Personally, I'm feeling quite apathetic about it all. I can't foresee manufacturers being willing to work together for a standard, let alone one that'd be open and freely accessible to hobbyists, and I believe that especially all the GPU and video-engine stuff will be kept under lock and key indefinitely. Part of the problem is that pretty much all of these SBCs are built around tablet-SoCs, with no SoCs specifically designed for hobbyist-use and SBCs.
Do you yourself use Raspberry Pis in your daily life and if so what for?
Do you ever get tired of people asking for new hardware features?
Was the Raspberry Pi 3 rushed to market to silence people asking for new hardware features?
Did they stop asking for new hardware features?
Lovely card.. I have a few and they are fun to use. I will wait for more speed. I assume no SATA is a power problem. Is that true?
Can we count with a VideoCore revision on the next Pi?
For an educational computer, the omission of labels of expansion header pins in the PCB's silkscreen is odd. Was there a specific reason why the labels were left out?
Debian has .onion for secure update.
When?
You've founded multiple successful ventures related to technology. While many entrepreneurs may manage to pay their own bills working out of their garage, to "own their job", you've had success beyond that, more than once. What do you think is the biggest reason your projects have been much more successful than the typical entrepreneurial venture which never grows beyond just a few people?
Will it come in version 4 finally? I know that you can customize the board for commercial entities, but I'm too small to go that route and this is the only thing that prevents me from ordering more of them.
Certain applications would work better on an x86 CPU as opposed to ARM (due using x86 assembly). Is it possible to make a Pi with a low-cost CPU like a quad-core Atom x5-Z8350?
Of course, I wouldn't expect the price to be the same. That Atom alone would drive up the price to about $50.
{An AMD CPU might also work, but I don't know anything about their embedded CPU pricing/performance.)
Are there versions out there that can compete with an Intel compute stick for performance vs price to act as a cheap streaming HDMI dongle for a 1080p monitor? What are some advantages that Raspberry Pi might have for someone that doesn't mind doing basic breadboarding and looking to purchase a product for this type of application? Is that even possible? I've never owned a Raspberry Pi.
What is you thoughts about bacon?
Like, will it have a Zen processor in it?
I've been leading some CoderDojo sessions on Raspberry Pi programming at the local library, and the Pi is a great teaching tool.
However, I feel like the software that comes with the Raspbian distribution is falling behind. Two key examples:
* Scratch - The 1.x version of Scratch that comes pre-installed is pretty ancient. While this is partly due to some bad technology choices the Scratch team has made, it'd be great if out of the box we'd have an option for Scratch 2.0 support (or some competing equivalent)
* Minecraft Pi - the mcpi library is a great teaching tool, but the problem is the outdated Minecraft that comes with the default install. It's stuck in an alpha version, with a lot of limitations. Not saying that we need the full "game", but it'd be nice if it didn't have arbitrary limitations like only 5 players in one server (I wish I could have the whole class in the same world) or lots of issues with mouse input/etc.
* python - IDLE3 is not a great python IDE. The auto complete seems very inconsistent, to almost non-functional. Also, why do we default to python2 instead of python3 in the terminal?
I know these projects are not owned by the Raspberry Pi team, but Scratch and Minecraft Pi are part of the appeal of learning to program on the Pi (which has almost nothing to do with the hardware). I was disheartened when a member of my Dojo stopped by asking if he could just do all his programming in python with Minecraft on his PC, I had a feeling there was frustration with its limitations, when I think this little piece of hardware should be the 1st choice a student should look for learning how to code.
- sigs are for wimps.
Somebody already asked about RISC-V and there are plans for a SoC based on RISC-V like the lowRISC project... but what do you think about creating a Raspberry Pi using free / open ISAs like OpenRISC, OpenSPARC or even RISC-V?
Has the option of adding POE for power an option?
We have a pretty good size installation of Pi2 and Pi3 for kiosks and other display surfaces and would love a clean POE option to avoid all the power adapters.
The archaic ARMv6 architecture CPU in the original Pi is radically different from the ARMv7+NEON of the Pi2 or the ARMv8 of the Pi3. When the Pi2 was released you said the performance advantage of ARMv7 builds optimized for the Pi2 wasn't big enough to justify the complication of having a separate OS image. But after the introduction of the Pi3, as people migrate to newer Pis and the rest of the open source ARM world takes v7 and NEON for granted, don't the scales start to tip in favor of builds for modern processors?
Mathematica devs in particular have said that having to target such disparate architectures in a single binary prevents them from using a high-performance BLAS, which slows many kinds of algorithms down dramatically. And many multimedia codecs have had extensive NEON optimizations but these don't always get enabled at runtime on Pi2/3.
Thank you, come again.
Any chance of a somewhat more expensive unit with a consumer grade case and a (even if just for brief power outages) battery?
Any thoughts on how to address the "add-on syndrome" that plagues SBCs like the Pi products? As in the board is $35, but then after a power supply, case, SD card, wifi (if not equipped), USB hub, etc... you hit around $80-100. It makes it hard to run multiple projects at once, plus the quality of packaged hardware from retailers is often questionable at best.
In many ways the Pi has come to define an entire new genre of personal computing - something for hobbyists and students alike. It's perfect in this regard... But with all that you've learned from the various Pi models, would you ever consider a different price point/feature set? Do you get asked for this?
For example, if we gave you a budget of £50, or £75, or £100, would building a machine to these price points interest you? What feature set would you consider?
Do you think there would be a place for something like a very cheap 6502 or z80 board similar to the Raspberry Pi only with much less complex hardware, as a teaching tool for closer to bare-metal instruction? Any plans?
Hi Eben,
I teach classes using the Raspberry Pi 2 (soon to be switching to 3, I hope) in a variety of contexts, such as with students wanting to learn ARM assembly and to K-12 teachers who want to do physical computing in their science classrooms.
It feels to me like the RPi is focused a little too much on Python and Scratch. I understand that it's called the Pi because of Python, but ARM assembly is my favorite assembly language, and bare metal assembly in particular is just a really natural fit for physical computing due to how easy it is to turn GPIO pins on and off. But the lack of documentation for the newer Broadcom SoCs has made it difficult for my students to write bare metal projects. So this leads to my question for you: are there any plans on rolling out better documentation / support / code examples for assembly on the RPi 2 and 3?
Despite this sounding like grousing, I would like to assure you that I love everything you've done with the Raspberry Pi and the notion of physical computing in general. Everyone who takes an assembly class or science technology workshop with me this year will get a free RPI3 and a bunch of sensors, wires, and motors to do hands-on, open ended projects. And I've been doing this for a while and it works really well. Thanks again for all of your vision and tireless effort you've spent in this arena.
If rPi3 is an official AOSP build target, is there a market for a $75 smartphone with lifetime software updates supported by the community; One Phone Per Child, anyone?
(Yes, I know others have tried and failed with opensource phones. The closest thing currently seems to be monohm's crowdfunded runcible but it's out of the price range for all but enthusiasts.)
If I go to buy a pi in Canada the $5 will be over $20 delivered, the $25 will be over 50(before shipping), and the $35 one will be $60+(before shipping).
The exchange rate isn't that great in Canada but it is nowhere that bad. This pretty much defeats the whole $5 and put it everywhere thing. What I am asking you is to prioritize deliveries to companies that will actually charge a reasonable price. A price that includes shipping. Then they have a habit of only having the "kits" in stock. This translates to paying another 40 for a crap SD card, a crap wall wart, and a crap case.
I would love to use some zeros robots and hand them to my kids to potentially destroy. But considering it is almost cheaper to by a crap laptop on the used market in Canada than a Pi this is just silly.
Is the tvout, fixed function hw or would it be possible to use as a DAC?
(fx: to gennerate a ATCS/DVB output)
would it be possible to bitbang or in other ways fake LVDS/FPD-Link over GPIO/DPI from VC4?
there exist packed on packed chips with nand,
was a rpi-zerro whitout micro sdcard ever considered?
does the bootrom check the size of bootcode.bin or is only the first n kb loaded ?
is the mailbox interface part of the boot rom, bootcode.bin or start.elf:
if not in boot rom:
what values do i need to put in what registers,and in what order; to create a HDMI framebuffer on the VC4 baremetal/bootcode.bin?
will there be an updated rpi-zerro with usb boot?
I've seen external usb hubs with ethernet, would they work with the new network/pxe boot (if they use same chip as RPI B)?
What happened to the A+ it has been MIA for the past 4-5 months?
And a realtime clock too.
https://www.youtube.com/c/BrendaEM
Will Broadcom ever fix the timing problems in its SoC to fix the SD card corruption issue or are we going to be stuck with USB/network boot as a workaround that only works on Pi3's?
#include <sig.h>
The Raspberry Pi Zero is a fantastic computer, especially with the addition of the camera connector. Even though WiFi can be added through the mini-USB port, that USB port is often already in use. The IoT devices I am trying to build make a small size desirable so the addition of a USB hub is undesirable. Will the Raspberry Pi Zero ever see WiFi added to it's list of features? I know it will be an added cost, and I'm sure many would be willing to see the price increased for built-in WiFi.
Why doesn't hardware designed for schoolchildren not have a shutdown button?
Would a button or even a pair of jumpers really add that much to the cost of materials?
Will there be 2GB RAM on new Raspberry Pi? When is the release date for new Raspberry Pi?
How hard is it to suck your own dick?
Microsoft Windows has gotten "interesting" over the past year. Linux is ready, but nobody is selling cheap plug-in and go Linux boxes in brick & mortar stores.
Will we ever see a RPi kit, including power supply, cables, a cheap mouse & keyboard, and a memory card loaded with a few thousand apps, in the impulse buy section of Walmart, Target, et al?
A simple arduino-based joystick-type mouse could be made for about a buck. Similarly, a membrane keyboard would be quite cheap. (You can get nice Logitech keyboards & mice for $10-$15, but thinking inexpensive here...) The software is open source and free and does pretty much everything your casual user needs a computer for. Memory (SD) cards have gotten quite cheap, not to mention large. Even the power supply & cables can be had inexpensively.
What's needed is for someone to put it all together and sell it for $19.99 or $29,99. An RPi Zero plus parts... The packaging could be the case. Just velcro it on to the back of your TV and you have word processing, games, compilers, everything.
Pricewise, this is getting down to the point where Kelloggs could put them in cereal boxes. You know, mail in 2 box tops plus $7.99 S&H for the RPi Zero. Another 2 box tops + $7.99S&H for the pre-loaded SD card. Use parts around the home for the rest or, more box tops + S&H. But, ya know, it could be done... The prices are getting low enough...
I mean everything. GPU sources (including firmware), bootloader, etc? After all the publicity, financial success, and so on the least you could do is get us the full code via any means at your disposal including reverse engineering (even if it takes several years).
The Pi is really nice for "soft" realtime projects - but running a full OS like Linux means that you can't ever get really solid realtime performance.
The hardware is now down cheap enough to replace Arduino's in the role of "bare to the metal" devices - and it sure would be nice not to have to have two families of boards in my hardware supplies box.
So how about a bare-to-the-metal OS - with nothing beyond the ability to download an executable and boot/run it and all of the hardware exposed...or perhaps some means to lock away one CPU core to run a hard-realtime task while Linux runs on the other(s)?
www.sjbaker.org
So many Ask Slashdot type stories now. Nobody seems to be commenting any more is why.
How did your move from software to chip design of an graphics processor, that had an ARM added on to become the Pi, come about? Do you think more coders, especially those adept at assembler, should cross the bridge to Verilog and VHDL?
Of all the projects people have completed with the Raspberry Pi, which one most impressed or amazed you?
Was the Pi Zero designed as a marketing campaign to sell subscriptions to the Raspberry Pi magazine, or is that just the way it ended up?
Follow-up: is there any plan to release a similar product with built in wifi?
Why not just connect ALL dsi lanes, csi lanes, sdio2, jtag, sound, etc to a 2nd 40pin connector?
it seems like such a waste to have some pins unconnected.. and with all pins exposed it could also replace the compute module.
I deffently see the marked for a zerro+ with dram+nand pop, 2x40pins, full HDMI in one end and musb2go + av port at the other end.
with solderpads on bottom for msdc & wifi/bt card; rtl,esp or broadcom (sdio+uart/usb?)
with the new bootrom it could also be without nand, by doing usb boot. (zero+ without & one+ with nand)
new features could include a pmic w/rtc, power button, battery charger & support for an usb+eth+poe+wol "hat" via new gpio pins.
and solderpads for tiny 4port smd usbhub on backside & solder bridges or 0ohm resistor to redirect usb to backside and back + 3ports to the new gpio.
non-standart connectors seem like such an ... apple choice