LONDON – Raspberry Pi, the credit card sized single-board computer developed in Cambridge, England, by the not-for-profit Raspberry Pi Foundation is going to be manufactured in the U.K.
Premier Farnell plc, one of the distribution companies that sells the board, has agreed a deal that will see Sony UK Technology Center (Pencoed, Wales), make an initial run of 300,000 units.
The Raspberry Pi was developed partly as means of encouraging programming skills amongst young people by providing a low-cost but capable computer that could be plugged into a TV screen for a display. The boards sell for a price of $25 or $35 plus local taxes depending on the unit specifications and have been sold by Premier Farnell since February 2012. But to date the boards have only been manufactured in China.
"By bringing the production of a U.K. product back into the country alongside its development and distribution, we can help support our economy and demonstrate the capabilities the U.K. has in terms of technological innovation, invention, and manufacturing," said Eben Upton, co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in a statement issued by Premier Farnell.
In the assembly of the Raspberry Pi, Sony is going to use a manufacturing technique called package-on-package to allow the ARM-based processor and memory to be stacked on top of each other, reducing the PCB footprint. This could also have advantages in using the on-chip graphics processor, believed to be a Videocore unit, a legacy of Broadcom's acquisition of Cambridge-based Alphamosaic Ltd. in 2004.
Interestingly Raspberry Pi Foundation has stated that Broadcom does not provide a full datasheet for the BCM2835 integrated circuit that is the system-chip at the heart of the board. Apparently Broadcom only provides the datasheet for such chips to people prepared to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
"To get the full SoC documentation you would need to sign an NDA with Broadcom, who make the chip and sell it to us. But you would also need to provide a business model and estimate of how many chips you are going to sell," is a quote from Raspberry Pi Foundation's frequently asked questions section.
Next: Linux board or embedded control