In context: In December 2022, Raspberry Pi boss Eben Upton said consumers should not expect a Raspberry Pi 5 to launch before 2024. Instead, he anticipated 2023 being a recovery year in which the Raspberry Pi Foundation continued to stabilize from lingering supply chain issues resulting from the pandemic-induced global chip shortage. Turns out, the foundation was able to right the ship ahead of schedule and is now on track to launch a new single-board computer before the end of 2023.
Upton said they are delighted to announce that the Raspberry Pi 5 will launch at the end of October, and that virtually every aspect of the device has been upgraded. It's also the first Pi to feature silicon designed in-house.
The new Pi 5 features a 2.4 GHz quad-core, 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 processor that's paired with a VideoCore VII GPU, which supports OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.2. The combo is said to be good for a 2-3x CPU speed improvement and twice the GPU performance compared to its predecessor, and there's also a lot more I/O bandwidth.
The Pi 5 is capable of driving two 4K60 displays simultaneously over HDMI and additionally supports dual-band 802.11 ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0. There's also a microSD card interface with SDR104 support, dual USB 3.0 ports supporting simultaneous 5Gbps operation, two USB 2.0 ports, an Ethernet jack, and even a PCIe 2.0 x1 interface to attach speedy storage.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is breaking tradition by announcing its new flagship ahead of launch – only the second time they've approached a new product release this way. Liz Upton, executive director of communications for the Raspberry Pi Foundation, said they felt like pre-announcing would give more people an opportunity to get their hands on a Pi 5 on day one.
The Raspberry Pi 5 comes in two flavors: the 4 GB model is priced at $60 and a variant with 8 GB will set you back $80. They're available to pre-order now from local authorized resellers and will start shipping in late October.