Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?

davej

@retrofreak89 said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@herb_fargus true but the pi developers might of noticed that the pi can be used for all kinds of projects and people want better faster pi's when time goes on so who knows maybe well get a pi dedicated for gaming one day itll be like a rpi x or something or rpi pro haha
Only wishful thinking...

There will never be a Pi dedicated to gaming as that isn't part of the supporting education goals of the Raspberry Pi Foundation and everything else Pis can be used for is secondary to that. Even Pis as a more viable desktop replacement is only useful to the RPF in so far as it makes their education goals more achievable.

Having said that, you may want to read this thread about VC5 on the official Raspberry Pi forums.

The bad news from the RPF's point of view is that the bits of VC5 that exist are the 3D and video decoding bits. VC4 includes many other things, like the camera interface, that RPF still need to provide solutions for - so they can't just use one of the existing set top box chips containing VC5.

The good news from a gaming/media centre point of view is that they only need the 3D and video decoding bits. It's also worth noting that the guy producing an OpenGL driver for VC4 is already adding support for VC5.

Xeon

I think a improved gpu is much more handy than you guys think.. not just for gaming but rendering power.
think about 3d ui, vr, ar.. much more to this than games.

Video encoding on core? leaving the cpu to really do some hard math.

maxbeanz

As has been said many times before, the Raspberry Pi was built as a low cost device for education, not for gaming. If they make it more powerful then it's going to use more power which defeats the point. I'm not sure what they are trying to sell with that Dreamcade thing. It's just a PC box which has been available for years. You could buy one now. All they are giving is a 3D printed case and a frontend. The emulators will probably be RetroArch as usual and most of all the price is a lot lot higher than a Pi.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

I think a improved gpu is much more handy than you guys think..

I think we have a much better idea of what GPUs can be used for than you think we do.

You need to remember what the Pi is for - education. THE most important part of the Pi specification is that it cost $35. Anything that gets added to future Pis will have to live within that constraint.

Separate GPU memory is not going to happen - it costs too much for too little benefit. All mobile GPUs apart from NVIDIA's use unified memory and, unlike on desktop GPUs, their tile based architectures mean it's not as big an issue as you seem to think.

twd

@darksavior least someone said it too many dumb kids are buying thease type of things called out ETA Prime on it punting that crap

RetroFreak89

@maxbeanz well yeah the Raspberry pi series is for education but i mean the developers seen i bet that most of the rpi is used for emulation and game projects so maybe they can create a more expansive pi series just for gaming projects so we Will have the education Raspberry pi's for 35 dollars and then we also have something like the Raspberry Pi Pro series bit pricier but aimed at heavier 3d applications or gaming :P that be Nice kinda like how we have the pi zero and the regular pi maybe well get another pi series that has a good gpu idk im just hoping but i bet it would sell if they made another series with better gpu even if it is more expansive..

Xeon

@davej i am not even going to reply.
They added 4 Cores... there will be another pi 0 and it will have 2 cores and cheap as the zero..
Same goes for the rest.

if it was only to be educational and cheap it would still just be 1 core because it would still be cheaper than 2.

Prove me wrong.

It's thanks to people saying 'we don't need more' that we don't get more.
Please be the guy to ensure pc's use 486's till we die.

Demand VS Supply.. it's 2017..

You will be amazed what 64MB of dedicated ram for the gpu will do.

Then on top of this... why does the retropie project 'started on the rpi' even exist?
Because we don't want to try play games?

Only fooling yourself and the people that up vote you.

herb_fargus

@xeon what you want and what the pi foundation want may not agree.

Xeon

@herb_fargus
That's up to them.
But if we enforce what they want hard enough.. they would be selling us utter junk and we would act happy.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@davej i am not even going to reply.
They added 4 Cores... there will be another pi 0 and it will have 2 cores and cheap as the zero..
Same goes for the rest.

if it was only to be educational and cheap it would still just be 1 core because it would still be cheaper than 2.

Multi-core programming is a widely applicable skill so there's a lot of educational value in providing multiple cores. Developing for immediate mode GPUs vs tiled ones - very little educational value (certainly compared to the task of learning 3D programming in the first place).

Prove me wrong.

It's thanks to people saying 'we don't need more' that we don't get more.
Please be the guy to ensure pc's use 486's till we die.

Nobody is saying that it shouldn't be improved - just that your views of how it should be developed don't fit with the goals of the RPF.

Besides which they do improve things as existing components get cheaper as long as the $35 constraint allows. That's why Pis went from single core ARM6 to 4 core ARM7 and now 4 core ARM8. They also added Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and produced a really cheap limited version (the zero).

Demand VS Supply.. it's 2017..

You will be amazed what 64MB of dedicated ram for the gpu will do.

Have you done much GPU programming? Do you understand why mobile GPUs need far less memory bandwidth than desktop GPUs do? Do you have any idea of the additional costs of adding dedicated memory chips, with the extra connections for separate data and address buses, that you'd require (that $35 constraint again). In any case 64MB is pitifully small for a modern GPU - we're talking GeForce 2 era here.

Question for you: Supposing cost savings meant the RPF could either add separate memory for the GPU or an ADC chip. Which do you think would provide more educational value?

Then on top of this... why does the retropie project 'started on the rpi' even exist?
Because we don't want to try play games?

Only fooling yourself and the people that up vote you.

It's rather a case of understanding the goals of the RPF and having an understanding of the implications of what it is you are proposing.

Xeon

@davej
Yes I Do understand the implications.
Yes there may be a price increase.
Yes I have programmed shaders and bare bone ASM and my own graphics engines.

I don't have any comments to make further as you have not disproved the need for more gpu power and merely flopped pricing and education as the main arguments.

There are tons of boards online with bigger gpu's.. they did not fail due to this.. they failed due to the software base.
they could easily now add a board for those that want more brunt without any problem as this will not end what they have built.

Give me a real reason why not.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

@davej
Yes I Do understand the implications.
Yes there may be a price increase.
Yes I have programmed shaders and bare bone ASM and my own graphics engines.

I don't have any comments to make further as you have not disproved the need for more gpu power and merely flopped pricing and education as the main arguments.

Pricing and education ARE the main arguments - we are talking about an organisation set up with the goal of encouraging education in computing by providing cheap hardware. Extra GPU power for people to play games is not a requirement as far as the RPF are concerned.

There are tons of boards online with bigger gpu's..

None of them have separate GPU memory - which is why I'm puzzled as why you think it's so important.

they did not fail due to this.. they failed due to the software base.
they could easily now add a board for those that want more brunt without any problem as this will not end what they have built.

If you think adding a board with a new GPU, whilst keeping compatibility with existing stuff, is easy you really don't understand the implications of what you are asking for.

Give me a real reason why not.

It would cost money that they could better spend fulfilling their educational goals.

You might not like it but that is the real reason.

The Pi4 is highly likely to have a VC5 GPU but you'll probably start complaining it's not as fast something else.

Xeon

i was using the separate memory as a example.

Adding a enhanced gpu does not have to mean a full rewrite.. didn't adding support for multi cpu devices mean we now have 2 different retro pie images?

I also never said it was easy.
It's also not impossible, a bit more gpu power wont end the universe really.
it won't destroy what has been built.
And it would not just be for gaming as some gpu's can do some amazing stuff on core that is not gaming related what so ever.
Just depends on how strong the gpu is

dankcushions

the pi foundation is not a limited company. they don't have shareholders, they are a charity. they are not driven by profits, otherwise they would have raised the price of the zero, not used UK production (i think some are made in china?) and... made a 'pi ultra' board that is better suited for its popular use in emulation/games.

i don't think the emulation stuff is ignored by them (the firmware was updated to support CRT 240p recently, for example), as i think it ties in quite nicely with their education goals, but at the same time it's not a reason for them to ditch the VC GPUs (which would be needed for them to have a better GPU, at least before the VC5 game out), especially now they have an open source driver stack for them.

i'm excited for the VC5 news, though. GLES 3.1 = saturn emulation is possible, amongst other things.

davej

@xeon said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

i was using the separate memory as a example.

Adding a enhanced gpu does not have to mean a full rewrite.. didn't adding support for multi cpu devices mean we now have 2 different retro pie images?

It's not about what RetroPie have to do - it's about what the RPF have to do.

I also never said it was easy.
It's also not impossible, a bit more gpu power wont end the universe really.
it won't destroy what has been built.

The current Pi chips are a complete set top box chip (the VC4) with bolted on CPUs. That's why it was relatively easy to switch to different CPUs. It's also worth pointing out that the VC4 is where the 1GB memory limit comes from. Changing the GPU essentially means throwing away the whole chip and starting again. They can't just cut a bit out and replace it with alternative bit, they'll want to move from 40nm to 28nm and you can't just shrink the existing circuit designs. We are talking £millions and years of development even if everything goes perfectly.

And it would not just be for gaming as some gpu's can do some amazing stuff on core that is not gaming related what so ever.
Just depends on how strong the gpu is

Ultimately, you have three choices:

Wait for the Pi4 and hope it meets your needs.
Put effort into developing support for alternative existing SBCs that have stronger GPU's than VC4.
Buy some sort of PC.

obsidianspider

While I would also appreciate more powerful hardware, I am also really enjoying the "constraints breed creativity" aspect of the Pi. With limited resources available people have been very creative in finding solutions. On a more powerful system you can be messier with an implementation because extra resource availability will absorb inefficiencies.

maxbeanz

@obsidianspider Yeah, I sort of agree. Because of the limits of the Pi, some emulators will be optimized to achieve the best possible performance, if we had much higher specs then the devs would just leave it and say "it works fine on a 1.8 GHz CPU".

ExarKunIv

There is no reason why the Pi guys (as i call them) will not come out with a Pi4 , but i do not see is anytime soon. everyone know that requirements change with the times. as people start wanting more and more from the Pi (not just us) they will come out with something better.

How much better and at what cost no one knows. as they say if one stands still one will die. that goes for everything in life.

so we just need to sit and wait to see what they will give us.
For now im very very happy with my Pi 3. it does more then i ever thought it could do with the size.

Xeon

@davej said in Raspberry Pi 4 Will It Ever Happen?:

Ultimately, you have three choices:

Wait for the Pi4 and hope it meets your needs.
Put effort into developing support for alternative existing SBCs that have stronger GPU's than VC4.
Buy some sort of PC.

Wait.... so they can swap out cpu's but not gpu's....
That sounds... so wrong on so many levels.

I also don't see any full pc's the size of the pi.

Alternate SBC's have not garnered the same support and most attempts have been futile.

However i do agree that the limits have forced efficient coding as back in the DOS days.
The rest just sounds like excuses to not improve.

I have had a extremely miserable day... with horrors that cannot be described with words.

PokeEngineer

@retrofreak89

If it is ever released, (which I doubt, just a bit) I'd say it would be released around 2018 or 2019.