Being a regular Raspberry Pi user, I was amazed by the surprising launch of Raspberry Pi 4. The Pi 4 with lots of astonishing changes like dual 4k display support using micro-HDMI ports, 3 RAM selection (1 GB, 2 GB & 4 GB) options, 2 USB 3 ports, and USB-C power supply. It will be interesting to see how fast the users adopt these changes. However, the product is out of stock at most of the official reseller websites.
Hardware Re-arrangements
Raspberry Pi 4 has the same 40 pin GPIO header as the previous 40 pins Raspberry Pi versions. The actual size and board dimension of Pi 4 are same as Raspberry Pi 1 B+/ 2 B/ 3 B/ 3 B+. That’s quite good news for shield and hat users.
Mechanical Drawing of Raspberry Pi 4
The Raspberry Pi 3 B+ cases will not be compatible with Raspberry Pi 4, as previous HDMI port is replaced by 2 micro-HDMI ports and position of USB and Ethernet port is swapped in the new launch.
The USB-C power supply and micro HDMI ports may convince users to buy new accessories.
CPU
Raspberry Pi 4 with a 1.5 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A72 BCM2711 compared to Raspberry Pi 3B+ 1.4 GHz quad-core ARM Cortex-A53 BCM2837B0 CPU helped to raise the benchmark for the version. The most impressive part of Pi 4’s CPU is that it is a 28-nanometer technology the predecessor 3B+ had a 40-nanometer technology, so the amount of power needed by CPU has come down significantly.
RAM
The Raspberry Pi Foundation made major changes to RAM and RAM selection choices, now Raspberry Pi 4 is available in three memory choices 1GB, 2GB and 4GB. This is the first time the Raspberry Pi Foundation has launched product invariants.
And the second major change is Raspberry Pi has jumped to LPDDR4 with 2400 Mhz SDRAM, which is almost 2.5x higher than the previous LPDDR2 with 900 Mhz on model 3B+.
Power Supply
The Pi 4 powered via 5V DC via USB-C connector or GPIO header(minimum 3A*) requires 15 watts to power the board and all its peripherals at its full capacity.
* A good quality 2.5A power supply can be used if downstream USB peripherals consume less than 500mA in total.
Peripherals
2 Micro HDMI ports that are 4K compatible at 60fps is a big change comparing to the Raspberry Pi 3 B+.
2-lane MIPI DSI display port 2-lane, MIPI CSI camera port, and 4-pole connector for composite video and stereo output are the same as in Raspberry Pi 3 B+.
4 USB 2 connectors in Raspberry Pi 3 B+ are replaced with 2 x USB 2 and 2 x USB 3 ports. The Gigabit Ethernet port is the same but now on the right of USB ports. POV hat is the same as the previous versions. The 40 pins GPIO has full-backward compatibility with the previous versions of Raspberry Pi.
Comparison
| Features/Specifications | Raspberry Pi 4 | Raspberry 3 B+ |
|---|---|---|
| Release Date | 24th June 2019 | 14th March 2018 |
| Processor | Broadcom BCM2711, Quad-core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.5GHz | Broadcom BCM2837B0, Cortex-A53 (ARMv8) 64-bit SoC @ 1.4GHz |
| RAM | 1 GB, 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4-2400 SDRAM (depending on model) | 1GB LPDDR2 SDRAM |
| GPU | OpenGL ES 3.0 graphics | OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics |
| Ethernet | Gigabit Ethernet | Gigabit Ethernet over USB 2.0 (maximum throughput of 300 Mbps) |
| Wi-Fi | 2.4 GHz and 5.0 GHz IEEE 802.11ac wireless | 2.4GHz and 5GHz IEEE 802.11.b/g/n/ac wireless LAN, |
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth 5.0, BLE | Bluetooth 4.2, BLE |
| USB | 2 USB 3.0 ports and 2 USB 2.0 ports. | 4 USB 2.0 ports |
| Video Decode | H.265 (4kp60 decode), H264 (1080p60 decode) | H.264 & MPEG-4 1080p30 |
| Video Encode | H264 (1080p30 encode) | H264 (1080p30 encode) |
| HDMI | 2 × micro-HDMI ports (up to 4kp60 supported) | Full-size HDMI |
| Power Supply |
|
|
| Expansion | Raspberry Pi Standard 40 pin GPIO header | Raspberry Pi standard 40 pin GPIO header |
| Dimensions | 85 x 56 mm | 85 x 56 mm |
| Price | 35 USD, 45 USD, and 55 USD for 1GB, 2GB and 4GB RAM respectively | 35 USD |
It will be interesting to see how Raspberry Pi 4 gets used at home, schools and commercially with increased CPU and RAM performance.
This blog is published by SB Components.
Check New Launched Raspberry Pi 4 Cases.
