After long months marked by the shortage of semiconductors, the Raspberry Pi foundation is finally picking up some color. Inventories are slowly starting to stabilize and 2023 should mark the year of a return to normal for the association. On the other hand, 2023 will not be the year of the Raspberry Pi 5.
Cascading shortages
In an interview with the YouTube channel ExplainingComputers, Eben Upton (co-founder of the Raspberry foundation) made it clear that a new version of the microcomputer will not be released next year, 2023 being a year of “reprisefor the organization. “*There is value, I think, in waiting a year before considering presenting anything… in waiting a year to recover from what just happened to all of us…* ” philosophizes the responsible.
The Raspberry Pi 4 is now over three years old, but its career has been largely slowed by the health crisis and the resulting supply difficulties. The Raspberry Foundation therefore wants to give it a chance before launching a new product that would inevitably create new problems in the supply chain. As Eben Upton explains, “shortages are not just in silicon, we also experience shortages on the packaging front, in our testing and validation capabilities, and in the availability of other materials.“
A Raspberry Pi 5 under better auspices
Launching a new product that could not meet the demand of the general public would therefore be “catastrophic“according to the manager.”We don’t want people to put themselves on a waiting list. We want people to wake up in the morning, want a Raspberry Pi, and then get one the next morning at 9 a.m.“explains the co-founder.
The Raspberry Pi 5 was still very timidly talked about a few days ago when the association’s official Twitter account published an image containing the first development tracks for the future machine. The draft being stuffed with little jokes about possible “backdoors” present within the machine or the integration of a “Black Box“containing”nuclear safety codes“, it is not easy to gauge the level of progress of the project.