What impact did the Raspberry Pi have in the 10 years since its birth?



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Raspberry Pi is a single board computer developed by researchers and engineers at the University of Cambridge, and will celebrate its 10th anniversary in February 2022. The University of Cambridge has released a special page commemorating the 10th anniversary of the birth of the Raspberry Pi, which is now used by businesses and the general public around the world.

The life of Pi: Ten years of Raspberry Pi
https://www.cam.ac.uk/stories/raspberrypi

A major feature of Raspberry Pi is that it is not a commercial company that is developing it, but the Raspberry Pi Foundation , a charity established to promote computer science research. Eben Upton , co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, was a member of the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge at the time of development. Around Mr. Upton, it was said that the decrease in the number of students trying to study computer science at Cambridge University was regarded as a problem.

'At the University of Cambridge, where the computing tradition is so rich, there was a traumatic situation where the number of people trying to learn computer science was drastically reduced,' said Upton. Apton and his colleagues thought that the reason why few people are trying to learn computer science is that they have little experience in touching computers as a child, and they make a computer that can be programmed at a low price that anyone can get. I started the project.

Born in 1978, Apton became interested in programming because of the BBC Micro , an educational computer designed for the BBC's IT education project, and the Acorn Computers, which developed the BBC Micro, was founded in Cambridge. 'I thought it should be done by Cambridge (if I remake the BBC Micro to get young people interested in coding),' Apton said.



The Raspberry Pi design team, which was attended by a wide variety of experts, set four conditions for manufacturing the Raspberry Pi. It was 'programmable hardware,' 'providing the enjoyment that young people expect from a PC,' 'affordable,' and 'rugged enough to be handled by children.' 'We really wanted our kids to have their'Raspberry Pi', so we had to put it in our school bag and take it out 1000 times,' said Upton. increase.

From 2006 to 2011, we worked on the development of a prototype that meets these four conditions, and finally succeeded in developing a Raspberry Pi consisting of only three chips. The Raspberry Pi was designed to work as a programmable computer by connecting a keyboard to an external monitor, while still being rugged at a low cost of only $ 35 (about 2700 yen at that time).

The Raspberry Pi, which went on sale in February 2012, has produced a cumulative total of more than 40 million units by February 2022, and the market size including peripheral devices has reached 1 billion dollars (about 115 billion yen). .. In addition, Raspberry Pi has high adaptability and stability, so it is in high demand as an industrial device, and it is said that it is used for charging electric vehicles, IoT devices, remodeling of factory machinery, etc. At the time of writing the article, it seems that the ratio of the industrial sector to the sales of Raspberry Pi has reached about 40%.

Originally manufactured in China, the Raspberry Pi was manufactured in

Pencoed , Wales, England at the time of writing, creating approximately 300 jobs. 'The Raspberry Pi is a British product developed by British engineers, but it has found a huge global market. Southern Wales has a long manufacturing tradition, and with the success of the Raspberry Pi, this We are pleased to have new skilled workers hired in the region. Global success is transforming the community. We are proud to play a part in Pencoid. ' I did.



In 2007, when the development of Raspberry Pi was in the early stages, the number of students aspiring to computer science at Cambridge University was about 200, but by 2021, it will be over 1600. matter. 'I can't claim that the Raspberry Pi played all the roles (increasing the number of aspirants), but I've become part of the community and solidarity that has made such a change in 10 years,' Upton said. Is great. '

in Hardware, Posted by log1h_ik