A 64-bit Raspberry Pi with 8GB of RAM and USB boot
Pi in the Sky
© Lead Image © innovari, fotolia.com
The Raspberry Pi 4 equipped with 8GB of RAM is the top end of this popular small-board computer. A 64-bit version of Raspberry Pi OS and the ability to boot from storage devices connected over USB are also just around the corner.
When the fourth generation of the Raspberry Pi was presented in June 2019, the Raspberry Pi Foundation fulfilled almost all the wishes of its loyal fans. With directly wired Gigabit Ethernet, fast USB 3.0 ports, and two monitor connections, the Raspberry Pi had finally come of age [1]. Technical details, such as the new BCM2711 system on a chip (SoC), along with the four Cortex A72 cores and up to 4GB of RAM were nearly forgotten.
Almost a year later, the Foundation launched a new variant of the Raspberry Pi 4. Besides versions with 1, 2, and 4GB of RAM, the new version was now also available with 8GB of RAM for an official price of $75 (£73/EUR78) – hardly a surprise, because the variant was listed in the Safety and User Guide enclosed with each board, more or less by mistake. Technically, the BCM2711 chip on the Raspberry Pi 4 can address up to 16GB of memory, but no chip manufacturer was able to supply LPDDR4 (low power, double data rate) chips with 8GB of capacity for the 2019 release [2].
In terms of components, the 8GB version hardly differs from the previous Raspberry Pi 4 versions; the only difference is that the RAM chip's identifier ends in D9ZCL (Figure 1). Having more RAM also means a minor adjustment of the power supply. Apart from that, the boards of the different variants are like identical twins.
[...]
Buy this article as PDF
(incl. VAT)
Buy Linux Magazine
US / Canada
UK / Australia
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
Support Our Work
Linux Magazine content is made possible with support from readers like you. Please consider contributing when you’ve found an article to be beneficial.
News
-
There's a New Linux AI Assistant in Town
Newelle is a Linux AI assistant that can work with different LLMs and includes document parsing and profiles.
-
Linux Kernel 6.16 Released with Minor Fixes
The latest Linux kernel doesn't really include any big-ticket features, just a lot of lines of code.
-
EU Sovereign Tech Fund Gains Traction
OpenForum Europe recently released a report regarding a sovereign tech fund with backing from several significant entities.
-
FreeBSD Promises a Full Desktop Installer
FreeBSD has lacked an option to include a full desktop environment during installation.
-
Linux Hits an Important Milestone
If you pay attention to the news in the Linux-sphere, you've probably heard that the open source operating system recently crashed through a ceiling no one thought possible.
-
Plasma Bigscreen Returns
A developer discovered that the Plasma Bigscreen feature had been sitting untouched, so he decided to do something about it.
-
CachyOS Now Lets Users Choose Their Shell
Imagine getting the opportunity to select which shell you want during the installation of your favorite Linux distribution. That's now a thing.
-
Wayland 1.24 Released with Fixes and New Features
Wayland continues to move forward, while X11 slowly vanishes into the shadows, and the latest release includes plenty of improvements.
-
Bugs Found in sudo
Two critical flaws allow users to gain access to root privileges.
-
Fedora Continues 32-Bit Support
In a move that should come as a relief to some portions of the Linux community, Fedora will continue supporting 32-bit architecture.