The Raspberry Pi Foundation launched the Compute Module 3+ earlier this week, which is the last of the 40nm Pi boards. That means talk has inevitably turned to the Raspberry Pi 4, and founder Eben Upton is happy to hint at what to expect.

In an interview given to Tom's Hardware, Upton, who is both founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading Ltd., gives us a pretty good idea of what the Pi 4 is. Don't hold your breath to grab one, though, as it's not going to arrive for quite some time.

For now, the Pi 4 is only in the planning stages, but Upton is happy to confirm a few things. For one, we should expect the next board to maintain the $35 price point, which is quite impressive when you consider that with inflation the $35 you paid for a Pi in 2012 is actually $38 today. We also know it won't use a 40nm processor as that ended with the Compute Module 3+. However, it also won't be a 7nm chip as Upton explains it would be too costly to get that to work with 3v3 input and outputs. The safe bet would be on a 28nm chip.

Regardless of the process used to create the chip, it will be faster and complimented by more RAM. Upton says, "everyone's wish list for the product looks the same: more processor, more RAM, faster network [and] faster non-multimedia I/O." It's also clear that the Pi needs to move beyond the 1GB RAM limit and 1.4GHz Cortex-A53 because even today there's competing boards offering a lot more performance in a similar price range. More RAM, embracing USB 3.0, and faster networking, will also be key to the board's success. Don't expect it to have USB-C, though, as Upton doesn't believe the connector is "rugged enough" for all the different usage scenarios.

Finally, we know it will definitely be called the Raspberry Pi 4 and won't be any larger than the current Pi 3B+ ($37.79 at Amazon) . Also, don't expect it to arrive in 2019. There is no defined plan yet for turning the idea of the Pi 4 into an actual board, which means 2020 at the earliest, and to me it sounds like late 2020 when you consider how many boards need to be produced to cope with demand at launch.

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