Following on from months of build-up as the system passed through the final stages of design, testing and production, The RaspberryPi Foundation is ready to make an announcement tomorrow morning at 6am GMT, where, we expect the charity to launch its new RaspberryPi, credit card-sized, £22 computer system.
Whilst a release hasn't yet been confirmed, we know that stock of the finished product was due into the UK first thing last Monday; the Foundation's announcement stated "Ladies and gentlemen, set your alarms! The Raspberry Pi Foundation will be making a big (and very positive) announcement that just might interest you at 0600h GMT on Wednesday 29 February 2012. Come to www.raspberrypi.org to find out what's going on."
The model expected to launch initially is 'Model B', which, on top of the features included in Model A, is equipped with 256MB of RAM and 100Mbit Ethernet. The SoC powering the device is in fact a re-purposed, Broadcom VideoCore, which is targeted at devices with a focus on video recording and playback. Whilst only featuring a 700MHz ARM 11 CPU, if exploited fully, the general purpose logic previously targeted at video encode/decode can reproduce graphics on the level of, if not exceeding Apple's iPad 2 and, of course the unit remains excellent for hardware accelerated video playback.
Whilst initially the unit will be supplied with a basic Fedora Linux image, the software scene is expected to expand rapidly as the community places its hands on the board, with many more features such as QT5 support further up in the pipeline.
EDIT: The system is now available from Farnell and RS Components at £21.60.
