The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation

The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation

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Source | Xinzhiyuan

Editor | Yuan Xie Hao Kun

Having just celebrated its 10th birthday, Raspberry Pi has long shed its image as a cheap computer teaching tool and has become a world-leading microcomputer brand.

Why is it called ‘Raspberry Pi’?

In a sense, the name ‘Raspberry’ is quite simple, as everyone at the time was using various fruits to name computers and companies.
Among the many ‘fruits’, the most famous is the ‘Apple’.
However, there are also names like Apricot and Acorn.
Acorn was the company that made the BBC Micro, and this computer was one of the reasons that inspired co-founder and CEO Eben Upton to develop the Raspberry Pi.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Additionally, Upton mentioned that the name is a playful reference to ‘blowing a raspberry’, which implies making a derisive sound.
As for ‘Pi’, does it remind you of 3.14159265358979323846…
Indeed, the ‘Pi’ in the name pays homage to the magical irrational number ‘π’, and also represents the programming language ‘Python’ used in its development.
Of course, ‘Raspberry Pi’ can also be understood as a pun on ‘Raspberry Pie’, thus naturally leading to the delicious ‘Raspberry Pie’.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation

The Life of Pi

In fact, the history of Raspberry Pi began in 2006.
At that time, the tech world was vastly different; Google had just become popular, Facebook was still quite new, and Twitter had just been born.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Everything about Raspberry Pi started with a young engineer at Broadcom.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
In May 2011, the Raspberry Pi team first showcased a prototype.
On July 24, 2011, the Raspberry Pi community opened and released its first official blog post.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
In November and December 2011, the Raspberry Pi prototype underwent two major design changes and was finally finalized.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
In 2011, some alpha and beta versions that eventually became the first Raspberry Pi board were released to a closed user group.

The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation

In January 2012, the first Raspberry Pi board—Model B (yes, Model B came before Model A)—was revealed, but only 10 boards were available on eBay.
On February 29, 2012, Model B began to be sold to the public.
According to a British tech enthusiast, he was waiting online to place an order at 6 AM that day. And it seems he was not alone, as the two online stores selling Raspberry Pi quickly crashed due to overload.
In March 2012, the Raspberry Pi team announced that a batch of defective products from a Chinese factory would affect the shipment of initial orders.
By the end of March 2012, the Raspberry Pi team announced that qualified supplements from the Chinese factory had arrived, and the initial order gap had been filled.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
“We realized from the start that the market response would be larger than expected,” Upton said. “Our initial idea was to produce 1,000 or 10,000 units or something like that… We ordered a few thousand units from the first contract manufacturer in China.”
“Around Christmas 2011, when we received the first batch of beta products, we put a Debian-based operating system online… It immediately had 50,000 downloads, and all the downloader could do was run it on a QEMU emulator (which had a configuration similar to Raspberry Pi).”
“50,000 people downloaded this very primitive operating system for a machine they couldn’t buy!” Upton exclaimed.
It was then that the founding team realized that customer demand for Raspberry Pi would far exceed 1,000, 10,000, or even 100,000 units.
In May 2012, the first Raspberry Pi with a camera module was successfully developed.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
The first photo taken with a Raspberry Pi, captured by a developer during testing
In September 2012, Raspberry Pi production was moved to Sony’s European facility in the UK.
In May and September 2012, Raspberry Pi began to ship initial orders, with the first products sent to tech product launch events in New York and the West Coast Bay Area.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Upton at a tech developer conference on the West Coast, with Raspberry Pi co-founder Liz Upton saying she wanted to have installation art in the office as well
In October 2012, the memory of Model B was expanded to 512MB.
By the end of November 2012, the price of the Raspberry Pi Model A was successfully reduced to $25. The final iterations of the original Raspberry Pi computers, such as Pi 1 Model A+ and B+, are still available for purchase today.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Time has changed, yet the same computing power devices have different sizes in different eras
Some British tech enthusiasts lamented that this microcomputer, which looks more like a motherboard, does have competitors on the market.
But there are truly no competitors that can update the operating system for a decade like Raspberry Pi, ensuring that both new and old users can still use even the oldest original products.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
To date, Raspberry Pi has produced about 46 million units, although it has been somewhat difficult to purchase due to supply chain issues in 2022.
Now, Raspberry Pi also manufactures and designs its own chips and microcontrollers, opening up a whole new range of potential applications.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Raspberry Pi chip

How to Make a Raspberry Pi?

Upton grew up with the BBC Micro: one of the two popular computers designed in Cambridge in the 1980s (the other was the Sinclair Spectrum), which taught a generation of British computer enthusiasts how to code.
The Micro not only ignited Upton’s passion for programming but also made him a fan of low-cost computers.
However, this gem that cost £350 was still too expensive for students.
Therefore, Upton had the idea of creating a ‘substitute’ that would be ten times cheaper than the BBC Micro, allowing ten times as many students to use it.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
However, achieving this required expertise in technology, industry trends, education, and manufacturing to design a low-cost, high-performance computer.
At first, Raspberry Pi was merely a personal project. Upton was developing it during his evenings and weekends.
Later, Upton gradually organized a team consisting of Robert Mullins and Alan Mycroft from the Cambridge Computer Science and Technology Department, Cambridge serial entrepreneurs and angel investors Jack Lang, and other Cambridge computer scientists, engineers, and manufacturing entrepreneurs.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Various design prototypes of Raspberry Pi on display at the Cambridge University Computer Laboratory before its launch
For Raspberry Pi, four interrelated requirements had to be met:
  1. It should be programmable hardware.
  1. It should be fun: the crowd of the 1980s might have been interested in computers because of games, but the nature of computers at the time meant that many of them stumbled upon programming almost by accident. Raspberry Pi had to be equally fun and capable of meeting young people’s expectations of a PC.
  1. The price should be low enough: the team determined a starting price of $25, partly because it was about the cost of a textbook, and it was low enough for most families to afford, while schools could subsidize a few families that couldn’t afford it.
  1. It must be sturdy enough: Upton stated that they wanted children to have their own Raspberry Pi, which meant it had to withstand being put in and taken out of a backpack a thousand times.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Ultimately, a stable, powerful, and affordable Raspberry Pi was born in 2012.
In 2013, Raspberry Pi won the INDEX Design Award; in 2017, it received the UK’s oldest engineering innovation award—the MacRobert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Some nerds jokingly remarked that considering cost, compatibility, ease of understanding, energy consumption, and multitasking performance, Raspberry Pi outperformed girlfriends in all metrics.

Today’s Raspberry Pi

As hardware itself, the Raspberry Pi family has developed quite robustly.
There is the $4 Raspberry Pi Pico, as well as the flagship Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with up to 8GB of RAM (with 2GB and 4GB RAM options available).
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Raspberry Pi 4
Additionally, there is the all-in-one computer Raspberry Pi Model 400, which has performance similar to Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and 4GB of RAM.
The Evolution of Raspberry Pi: A Decade of Innovation
Raspberry Pi 400
For those who need smaller and cheaper circuit boards, there is the Raspberry Pi Zero series, which integrates Bluetooth and WiFi as well as 512MB of SDRAM.
Now, Raspberry Pi not only opens the door to programming for people of different ages and backgrounds. Its adaptability, stability, and low price make it an ideal choice for applications such as electric vehicles, the Internet of Things, or automated assembly lines.
As a ‘computer’, one particularly unique aspect of Raspberry Pi is that even the ‘old antiques’ purchased in 2012 can still run the latest operating systems from 2022.
References:
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi
https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/happy-birthday-to-us-3/
https://dronebotworkshop.com/pi-10/
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