This article was taken from the March 2012 issue of Wired magazine. Be the first to read Wired's articles in print before they're posted online, and get your hands on loads of additional content by subscribing online.
https://www.wired.co.uk/topic/amazonMeasuring just 85mm by 54mm and costing $25 (£16), the Raspberry Pi packs a punch. "It can do anything a PC can," says engineer Eben Upton, one of six Cambridge-based creators. At its heart is a Broadcom system-on-a-chip, and with 128MB of RAM it can run a full version of Linux-based system Fedora 15 as powerfully as a Pentium II machine.
Production of the more school-friendly £22 Model B (above) began in January, with the basic £16 Model A to follow soon. The Raspberry Pi Foundation wouldn't share its costs with us, so we asked Southampton University's electronics and computer science team to take an educated guess, based on a 100,000-unit run of Model A.
The costs:
HDMI port: 18p
USB port: 13p
Audio jack: 28p
SD card slot: 71p
And the rest:
Price estimates by Southampton university computer scientists...
BCM2835 SoC: £7
RCA video socket: 23p
Power socket: 13p
Regulator: 9p
Switches: 15p
Headers: 20p
Discrete devices: £1.80
Passive components: £1.50
PCB manufacture and assembly: £2.50
Marketing: 80p
Packaging: 30p
Total: £16
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
