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<div class="moz-cite-prefix">Raspberry Pi was developed by a
nonprofit entity. They don't make money on them. This already
seemed to be a problem IMHO when the release date got pushed and
production went very slowly as they released units basically
one-by-one. You don't usually see this sort of thing in
capitalist enterprises. Apple might not have enough iPads for
"everyone" on their release date, but that's because they've
convinced 10% of the US population that they must have one on Day
1 of the release and they've bought up all the free mfg in China
to make them. <br>
<br>
While they made a lot of them, they're not guaranteed to make them
forever or update the tech (it's a maintenance issue). The
Raspberry Pi Foundation is not only nonprofit, it's literally only
6 people. When one or two moves on or gets hit by a bus, it's
plausible the project will die.<br>
<br>
It's also a problem that the Broadcom chip at the core of the Pi
is NOT for sale elsewhere. It was a special, personal agreement
between Broadcom execs and RPF members. There will be no
competitors using the Broadcom chip unless things change
substantially.<br>
<br>
However, this isn't actually a problem. The RPI is merely the
vanguard of a new tech of cheap, powerful, single-board Linux
computers. The "Broadcom" chip is actually an industry-standard
ARM6K core, sold as design IP to many OEMs. Broadcom added the
video core and memory around the ARM instruction core and fabbed
it. Any mfg with the ARM6K (or another ARM core up to the task)
could do it even without the video core, but might be interfacing
through a low-resolution LCD protocol hacked together, or through
a terminal port (issuing and accepting ASCII command lines through
a data port such as UART, USB, ethernet, etc).<br>
<br>
But that's beside the point, because the Raspberry Pi will soon be
matched by an equal or superior core running Linux. There already
ARE ones specified. BeagleBoard was an early one- and expensive,
for what it did, relatively speaking- but Moore's Law expansion
applies to Single Board Computers. Next year they've got the
open-source OUYA gaming console <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);
font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 18px;
font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal;
letter-spacing: normal; line-height: 24px; orphans: 2;
text-align: left; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none;
white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px;
-webkit-text-size-adjust: auto; -webkit-text-stroke-width: 0px;
display: inline !important; float: none; "></span>planned for
release at $99, which is a helluva LOT more power than the RPI. <br>
<br>
IMHO we can expect to see commercially profitable Linux SPCs of
comparable core power to the RPI, with supporting Linux distros,
at Mouser, Digikey, etc within a couple of years. Note the
console RTKLIB sources are not machine-specific. If the ports are
hooked up, there's an FPU or enough core to implement FP calcs
with regular instructions, and enough RAM, it should run. Well
you need a compiler for that core- but right now all this stuff is
one of the ARM cores and we have GCC compilers for the ARM cores,
and can expect a GCC for any core to come out in the future.<br>
<br>
Danny<br>
<br>
On 8/14/2012 12:56 PM, Tshepang Lekhonkhobe wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote cite="mid:502A9137.1050302@gmail.com" type="cite">On
14/08/2012 11:31, Michele Bavaro wrote:
<br>
<blockquote type="cite">Raspberry-PI is useless for me as there is
no commercial product
<br>
development path beyond it.
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
Can you explain what this, 'commercial development path', means?
<br>
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