Earlier this year a small single board computer stamped with chips and I/O connectors — with the tasty name of Raspberry Pi — began receiving a great deal of press coverage. It has captured the curiosity of tech journalists and enthusiasts around the world due to a combination of its purpose, capabilities, and usefulness.

The Raspberry Pi is a small, barebones computer developed by The Raspberry Pi Foundation, a UK charity, with the intention of providing low-cost computers and free software to students. Their ultimate goal is to foster computer science education and they hope that this small, affordable computer will be a tool that enables that.

The printed circuit board (PCB) houses the input and output connectors as well as the computer hardware itself. Currently, the Foundation is selling a naked PCB — meaning there is no included Raspberry Pi case — and will release a cheaper version, with fewer connectivity options, soon. These two versions without cases are essentially the beta run and buildup to the release of the final product. The final version will be an educational edition with case, documentation, and pre-loaded educational software. On the software side of things, there are currently three Linux-based operating systems supported by the Raspberry Pi.

There were 10,000 Model B versions produced in the first production batch, and they all sold out within hours of going on sale. The Model B is the $35 version with the most connectivity options, and is the model that most enthusiasts are interested in. A Model A without ethernet and with a single USB port is on the way and will be sold for $25. Furthermore, the final educational edition Raspberry Pi computers (with case and extras) are slated for a summer 2012 release, though the price is unknown.

Specifications and performance

As for the specifications, the Raspberry Pi is a credit card-sized computer powered by the Broadcom BCM2835 system-on-a-chip (SoC). This SoC includes a 32-bit ARM1176JZFS processor, clocked at 700MHz, and a Videocore IV GPU. It also has 256MB of RAM in a POP package above the SoC. The Raspberry Pi is powered by a 5V micro USB AC charger or at least 4 AA batteries (with a bit of hacking).

While the ARM CPU delivers real-world performance similar to that of a 300MHz Pentium 2, the Broadcom GPU is a very capable graphics core capable of hardware decoding several high definition video formats. However, in order to keep costs of the Raspberry Pi low, the UK charity has only licensed the H.264 codec for hardware decoding (and it is unclear if users will be able to purchase/activate additional codecs). In that regard, the Videocore IV GPU is rather potent as it is capable of hardware decoding 1080p30 H.264 with bit-rates up to 40Mb/s.

The Raspberry Pi model available for purchase at the time of writing — the Model B — features HDMI and composite video outputs, two USB 2.0 ports, a 10/100 Ethernet port, SD card slot, GPIO (General Purpose I/O Expansion Board) connector, and analog audio output (3.5mm headphone jack). The less expensive Model A strips out the Ethernet port and one of the USB ports but otherwise has the same hardware. It is this model that is the “$25 PC” that originally made so many headlines.

What does the Raspberry Pi do?

The allure of the Raspberry Pi comes from a combination of the computer’s small size and affordable price. Enthusiasts envision using the small form-factor PC as a cheap home theater PC (HTPC), or secondary low-power desktop. Institutions, like schools and businesses, could benefit from deploying a fleet of computers for a fraction of the cost of traditional desktop towers. The small size makes for an easy-to-hide computer that sips power and can be mounted behind the display with an appropriate case. It could also be used in niche applications, like digital signage. While it will not blow away any recent hardware in performance, it does make for a cheap secondary computer which could be useful for troubleshooting and researching solutions if your man rig fails to boot as well.

Next page: The competition…