Raspberry Pi Foundation announces Raspberry Pi 5 with faster SoC and power button
The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced the Raspberry Pi 5. That device has a slightly different form factor than the Raspberry Pi and a power button. The device comes with a 27W power supply, but the energy consumption is unknown. The model will cost $60.
The foundation say that the new variant of the well-known single-board computer will be released in October this year. The Raspberry Pi 5 is the successor to the Raspberry Pi 4, which was released in 2019. It is striking that the Pi 5 has a slightly different form factor, with the Ethernet port having been moved to where it was on the Pi 3. However, the Pi 5 has other peripherals such as a USB-C port and two micro HDMI ports, meaning users can no longer use old Raspberry Pi 3 or 4 housings.
It is also striking about the form factor that the Pi 5 no longer has a 3.5mm port. The Raspberry Pi 5 does have pads to solder a composite video output yourself, but no analog audio: that has to be done via HDMI. A power button has also been added for the first time in the new model with which the device can be switched on and off. That button is accompanied by an LED light.
Faster components
The new Raspberry Pi 5 has been adjusted in almost all areas compared to its predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 4, which was released in 2019. The soc has been renewed. The Broadcom BCM2712 now has four Arm Cortex A76 cores running at 2.4GHz. The Pi 4 also has four cores, but they are slower A72 cores at 1.8GHz. The new, faster cores should deliver much better performance, according to a video with benchmarks that YouTuber Jeff Geerling showed. The CPU also has a shared 2MB L3 cache and 512KB per core of L2 cache. The model, just like the fourth Pi model, is available with 4GB or 8GB of RAM. That’s Lpddr4x-4267-ram.
High speeds and performance are usually accompanied by higher consumption and although the RPi 5 can work without cooling, the maker recommends some form of cooling. Also because of the form factor, a new housing is available that has active cooling. A separate, active cooler is also available. The higher performance is accompanied by a higher power consumption: the recommended power adapter delivers 25W via a USB C connector with PD. The Pi 5 also offers 802.11ac WiFi and both Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy.
Connections
The standard ports have remained: the Raspberry Pi 5 has four USB A ports and a network port. Two of those USB ports support speeds up to 5Gb/s, while the other two are standard USB 2.0 ports. The network port is a gigabit port with support for PoE+, but the required HAT will only be available later.
The two micro HDMI outputs, like the RPi 4, both support 4K video at 60fps. The two separate flex cable connectors for a webcam and DSI output of the RPi 4 have been replaced by two universal connectors on the 5, both of which are suitable for a webcam or display.
The micro SD card reader at the bottom has remained, but with SDR104 support it is suitable for the much faster UHS cards. The 40-pin GPIO header can of course still be found on the Raspberry Pi 5. New is the connector that makes a single PCIe lane available via a flat cable. The necessary adapter to connect PCIe cards such as video cards or an SSD is also not yet available. An adapter for M.2 SSDs is planned for early 2024.
Interfaces
The fast interfaces such as PCIe and the memory bus are connected to the BCM2712 SoC, but the other I/O, such as the four USB ports and the GPIO header, are connected to a ‘chiplet’. This gives the Raspberry Pi 5 a kind of southbridge or chipset: the RP1. It is produced using an older process than the BCM2712. The SoC is produced by TSMC on 16nm, while the RP1 is made on 40nm.
Also new is the new power management chip, or PMIC, the DA9091. It not only supplies the power for the BCM2712, but also has a real-time clock or RTC built-in. To keep that clock accurate, a header for a button cell battery can be found next to the chip.
Raspberry Pi OS
The Raspberry Pi Foundation software team developed a new version of the Raspberry Pi OS for the Raspberry Pi 5. That operating system should become available in mid-October. Just like the Raspberry Pi 4, there are also two variants of the Pi 5. One of them has 4GB of memory; that model costs $60. The other model has 8GB of memory and costs $80. The euro prices are not yet known, but at retailers such as Kiwi Electronics the models are available in stores for 69.99 and 92.95 euros respectively. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has a overview of all authorized resellers of the Raspberry Pi 5 available.