Product Summary

It has been a long time coming, but the Raspberry Pi has finally gone up for sale, albeit in a slightly different way than previously thought and it was expected that the Raspberry Pi Foundation would be handling sales and distribution all on its own, but that has been rethought. The product is a bare board with a 700MHz ARM11 CPU and 256MB of RAM and it's roughly the size of a deck of playing cards and has a powerful GPU that is reportedly competitive with that of modern smartphones. Developer prototypes of the product have been shown running impressive graphics demos and decoding high-definition video and the Raspberry Pi foundation originally began developing the computer with the aim of producing a low-cost system that could be used to teach computer programming to young students. Built on a Broadcom BCM2835 700MHz ARM11 processor, they're intended as a cheap computing option that require only a keyboard and RCA or HDMI-connected display to give a full desktop experience including gaming and HD video playback, also the team announced it has secured manufacturing and distribution agreements that should guarantee a steady supply, without the previous limitation of 10,000 at a time batches.



RS Components (RS), the trading brand of Electrocomponents plc (LSE:ECM), the world's leading high service distributor of electronics and maintenance products announced that the revolutionary credit card sized single-board computer from the Raspberry Pi Foundation is now available to pre-order from RS websites around the world. Created for educators, programmers, developers and IT enthusiasts, the kits can be pre-ordered at rswww.com. "Raspberry Pi provides a revolutionary low cost platform, which opens up programming to a whole new audience. We are very honoured to have been chosen to work with the Foundation as a distribution partner at the launch of this exciting new tool." The Raspberry Pi Foundation is a charity established to promote the development of computer development skills in education across the globe. Its vision is for Raspberry Pi to provide budding IT developers and programmers with a base platform to exploit the full power and potential of computing within the Linux environment, at a remarkably low cost. As such, Raspberry Pi computers act as an enabler for the next generation of programmers to enter the IT industry. RS was selected as a distribution partner for Raspberry Pi because, in the eyes of the Foundation, it connects with engineers across the globe throughout their careers.

As such, the company is well positioned to provide Raspberry Pi adopters with support, advice and access to additional resources as they embark on new development activities. It was particularly impressed with the DesignSpark community and resources provided for new developers working on Open Source designs. "RS has always been a trusted and reliable partner for engineers across the globe. The RS DesignSpark community and their free PCB design software connects with engineers throughout their career, and is being adopted by many universities around the world," said Eben Upton, founder and trustee of Raspberry Pi. "This ethos of providing resources for engineers, along with the company's support for open source design, makes RS the ideal distribution partner for Raspberry Pi." Glenn Jarrett, Head of Marketing, Electronics, at RS Components, added, "Raspberry Pi provides a revolutionary low cost platform, which opens up programming to a whole new audience. We are very honoured to have been chosen to work with the Foundation as a distribution partner at the launch of this exciting new tool." Further information on the Raspberry Pi Foundation can be found at www.raspberrypi.org. For more details on the RS DesignSpark community please visit www.designspark.com. Raspberry Pi can be pre-ordered from the RS website at rswww.com.

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