Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!

A Former User

Aside from specs, one thing I hope they do is change the layout of the ports a bit. I'd like to see 2 USB ports on the same side as the HDMI and power outputs and 2 ports on the opposite side (rather than perpendicular to them).

Some improvement to powering on/off would also be welcome. It doesn't have to be a real switch/button, just a pair of pins that would power the system on and off (with proper shutdown if turning it off) if you short it. Then you'd only need a simple switch, rather than something more complicated like the Mausberry circuit.

Lyle_JP

The heat problem has already been solved on the cell phone end. The Pi foundation needs to stop using a chip with a 40 nm die shrink. That's huge compared to most ARM processors today.

akafox

Yes I know there is a way...gigabyte did
https://www.gigabyte.com/Motherboard/GA-SBCAP3350-rev-10#ov

just the raspberry pi foundation needs to now..I have faith in them...just have to wait

(waiting sucks lol )

batman

I agree with the majority. At least 2GB of ram and a processor fast enough to run all Dreamcast and Nintendo 64 games without any problems!

Happy for the existing ports to remain the same but move the ethernet port with all the other to the back and USB to the front.

An early 2018 release would also be ideal. The sooner the better.

Fruitybit

@batman said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

An early 2018 release would also be ideal. The sooner the better.

It’s going to happen, but the board makers haven’t received prototypes yet, expected early part of next year, so realistically not till the end of 2018 at the earliest. No clues as to specs, so I’ve asked to be ‘kept informed’ of ANY developments. Got a lovely gift of pre-component circuit boards today, 6 per sheet pi3’s, may post a pic later if requested...

I quizzed him about the 4 layers thing I mentioned in this thread, turns out that’s the layers in the board itself - nothing to do with the chips mounted on it. If I can blag any board details when it comes, that may give an idea of what chips will be used.

So yay!! Pi4 is coming!! rubs thighs enthusiastically

dirthurts

@trailjacker I don't see 2 GB of ram being feasible with memory prices. I'm betting 1 GB with whatever budget processor Broadcom is making at the time, 1.4 ghz maybe?

Deltax5

Please be enough to run hi gan. I am tired of this input lag. 200 hz isn't a big jump I can easily overclock it that with a fan on it. But i guess a newer cpu with the same ghz is actually better but still.
I understand it needs around 3 ghz. maybe making a duel core with 3 ghz would be awesome or the people over there can do some tweeks to make it work propally. I guess there going to be on to us if they listen to us. THey really need to implement hi gan in emulation station .
I don't even think the emulators even use more then one core anyways. I may be wrong thou.
I was waiting on the next pi to get then they released the pi zero and got upset. I bought a pi 3. It's ok I guess, not anyware near perfect.
They should just make it the best $100 board it can be. Im fine paying 100 bucks if it's amazing. anything more I may as well get a cheep old computer.

herb_fargus

@deltax5 said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

They should just make it the best $100 board it can be.

You fail to understand the purpose the pi was built for. Higan requires at least a 3GHZ machine to even begin to be close to proper so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Riverstorm

I read this in an article interview with Eben Upton. It's the most successful selling British computer reaching 10's of millions and I think the 3rd best selling computer globally. It will be interesting to see the specs hitting the 40nm ceiling, keeping backwards compatibility and a $35 price point.

"Fans will be disappointed to hear that the next iteration of the Raspberry Pi won't be arriving until at least 2019. Eben Upton, co-creator and co-founder of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, has previously stated the current Raspberry Pi 3 would have a minimum life span of three years.

There is a possibility that the new Raspberry Pi 4 could be delayed beyond this, as the Foundation has effectively hit the limit of what can be achieved using the 40nm manufacturing process. Upton hasn't given up, however, stating: "we'll get there eventually".

Given the problems facing development, there's still no word on the technical specifications likely to feature in the Pi 4. Given that the company is struggling to innovate with the current 40nm, it is likely we'll see a switch to an alternate manufacturing process, offering more efficient silicon.

As for features, the Raspberry Pi 3 already includes Bluetooth and Wi-Fi support, so we're unlikely to see any substantial networking upgrades. You can also expect the form factor to stay the same, given the team's focus on interoperability between Pi generations.

Ports are an area where we may see some real change. For example, Thunderbolt 3-compatible USB Type-C ports can handle power, data, and video transfer - meaning that one USB-C port could do the job of every existing input found on the Pi 3. They're also substantially smaller than full-size USB Type-A ports, which would allow the Pi 4 to have a much slimmer profile.

vzapo

Raspberry Pi 4 won't come out at least until 2019.

Long story short, Raspberry pi 3 still holds on pretty well and with the current tech there is not to much they can upgrade that would make a bigger difference from Rpi3, so they are holding on a bit with Rpi4.

Read more here:
http://www.itpro.co.uk/desktop-hardware/27763/raspberry-pi-4-google-announces-partnership-with-raspberry-pi-foundation-2

akafox

@deltax5 said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

They should just make it the best $100 board it can be. I'm fine paying 100 bucks if it's amazing. anything more I may as well get a cheap old computer.

@herb_fargus said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

You fail to understand the purpose the pi was built for. Higan requires at least a 3GHZ machine to even begin to be close to proper so I wouldn't hold your breath.

Okay here we go...(in a nutshell)

Emulation does NOT run like the actual hardware and never will. In order to emulate you must load the software into ram..much like a PC no big deal right? Well that is incorrect. With emulation you must load the hardware and the software into ram thus eating up ram and making your computer slow. Combine this with "bad code" or hacks to get things to work AT ALL..well now you see the problem! That being said..if you are going to make an emulator more accurate it will cost more resources. When I was using DOS and got a faster computer I had to use a slowdown program to literally slow down my cpu to make the games not run so fast. The program was not written for a machine of that speed. So running a snes game on a modern PC "raw" would make it so damned fast you couldn't even play it.

Now let's talk about the pi...
First off the pi has a RISC cpu NOT a standard 8086 cpu. RISC stands for Reduced Instruction Set Chip. It is ARM-7 based just like the snes. But unlike the snes it does not have a extra sound chip to do sound..and it has to emulate hardware so it has to use all it's RAM to do what it needs to do (compare that to the snes that doesn't have to emulate hardware and had an extra sound cpu). Also understand that the raspberry pi 1 B+ is an equivalent of a 400 mhz computer. And yes it is. (I still have my 400Mhz computer with 64mb of ram and it runs about that well.) The pi 3 might be equivalent to a 600mhz but not that much more. ARISC does not do as many instruction set cycles as an standard 8006 cpu. Thus it runs much cooler but at a BIG cost of performance. That being said....

Lets talk about upgrading the pi..
First there are MUCH faster single board computers out there. Just look at your smartphone. Yes your smartphone. That is what the pi is. How much did you pay for it? I know it was NOT thirty-five USD. If you want better performance then you need to have a board that has at minimum three CPUs. A CPU (brain) A GPU (graphics) and an A[udio]CPU (sound) then the main CPU can be freed to do crunching of instructions. Which the 3DO, N64, Sega Saturn, and the Sega Dreamcast all had (in one form or another..which is why they are difficult to emulate properly) so they could do more. That would make the PI a "real computer" and give it a "real price tag"! One thing that the pi could benefit from is faster RAM...but again cost..and the PI is made to be cheap. That is the raspberry pi foundation's goal. (aside from the heat issue.)

So....
Yes you could get a cheap PC and get MUCH better performance. Besides when you add it all up (pi,case,power, hdmi cable,sdcard) it almost comes to 100 bucks anyway! That is NOT the point though. The point is just the coolness factor of the whole idea. (Try fitting a PC into a snes case!) The rasp pi was never designed for what we are doing with it. We are making the pi what it is. We are allowed to make the pi whatever we want it to be...thus why it it SO popular! Yes I would LOVE to see a more powerful pi and have it run dreacast games smoothly (note that PCs have a hard time doing that too!) and everything in between for "$35-ish". I'm crazy? Yes..so is everyone else (you KNOW you want that too! lol) One day that will come. For now I will complain and mumble..but truth is I am very happy with what i have because it is amazing what can be done with this thing at this price...here's to hoping that the raspberry pi foundation never losses sight of it's present goal..and here is looking to what they can do in the future! I might have to wait but the wait will be worth it!...(just hurry it up already! ;P)

Trailjacker

I think a lot of us get caught up in the fun and challenge of the Raspberry Pis (I've bought them since the Pi 1) and we get so close to doing 'everything' we want to do and we sometimes lose sight of the big picture of the Pi project and get aggravated that the RAM isn't just 20% faster, the processor isn't a 1.5ghz , or that my stupid NesPi case still gets voltage warnings lol. I am definitely guilty of all of that. My Pi 3B can /almost/ play my favorite N64 games and plenty of MAME games and that can be a huge tease.

This is when I usually stop tinkering and start Googling solutions and even other options. When I see all of the projects the Pi can do, even the Pi Zero, it puts things back in perspective. It can be a security camera, weather tracker, router, and with heat issues it can even be a pocket hand warmer in the winter time. Once I see how amazing the Pi is again for the price and size ( almost every project fits in your pocket!!) I immediately appreciate what it can do.

I never pursue other options though. The community here is unmatched and I would only get more frustrated trying to work on other systems without this free, massive community.

Deltax5

I thought they release them February's or is that when they announce them.

Deltax5

THey should make a pi version that is more expensive with speeds like a modern cell phone so we can get hi gan working. we need 3hz. We can't tell them this is a secret organization that takes advantage of a hardware that is for other perpases.

obsidianspider

Yup, super secret to the point that the project has been featured in the foundation's own magazine a few times.

akafox

@deltax5 Again 3Ghz. That would be a twelve core each core running 2.0 Ghz to even get close to a 3Ghz 8086 CPU. That would be a HOT item indeed! Although they have found ways to make them run cool at faster speeds..but this is a new technique and not cheap to do..that would make the pi the price of a modern smart phone ($500-$1,000). I'm NOT taking out a line of credit for a pi! 0.0 Of course I say that now... lol

And the Orange Pi has class/price tiers but no support (or little) so is it useful or not? And yes I am temped to get the Orange Pi equivalent of the pi3 but..I would be "on my own" I think.

Funny how the Arm RISCs were popular in the 80's..then people said they are rubbish..now every body has one (and doesn't know it! lol) ..but then again I know a guy that HATES linux and REFUSES to use it..but he has an Android phone and loves MY pi sooo... shrugs ...but that is a different rabbit hole for a different forum...

Brunnis

@deltax5 said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

Please be enough to run hi gan. I am tired of this input lag.

Snes9x already performs optimally in this regard. It adds no additional latency over what’s already in the games themselves. The only reason you’d want to use Higan is if Snes9x accuracy doesn’t cut it.

Deltax5

@brunnis said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

@deltax5 said in Raspberry pi 4 place your bets here!:

Please be enough to run hi gan. I am tired of this input lag.

Snes9x already performs optimally in this regard. It adds no additional latency over what’s already in the games themselves. The only reason you’d want to use Higan is if Snes9x accuracy doesn't cut it.

On my pc i notice alot less input delay with hi gan then snes9x. even zsnes has less input delay (thou still noticeable). I don't understand why zsnes isn't in retropi it has a linux version. IDK I tested this on my windows pc and I get the same input lag with the pi and windows with snes9x. Sigh I know having a better tv will help cause there is alot that a emulator does causing the lag.

cs75

I'd like:

the wifi chip to support mesh protocol
Reasons:

Rpi 3 native chip supports "ad hoc" but not "mesh".
Mesh protocol is more lightweight and simpler to implement .
Mesh is easier to configure (almost nothing to do)

An SATA connector
Reason:

differentiating permanent connected disks from removable ones
faster

Untuggle RJ45 and USB connectors
Reason:
- free network performance
USB 3.0
Reason :
- Accelerate I/O
2 GB RAM or more
Reason :
- Faster
- Helps distributed Filesystem and DB implementation
- Helps massive parallel implementation
- Simplifies big data analysis
- should fluidify graphics
Faster CPU/GPU
- Something like 2GHz for CPU
- Upgrade GPU but keeping the API (backwords compatible)
same price
optionnaly add a GSM card slot
use the sound output jack for sound input too or add a sound input jack.
Wifi a/b/g/ac

drake999

Here is my bet on what I consider realistic specs for a Pi4.

Same form factor as Pi3 model B
1.6 GHz Quad-core ARMv8
New and more powerful GPU
2 GB RAM
USB 3.0 x 4 Port
Built in Bluetooth and WiFi
Gigabit Ethernet
Same GPIO array as previous models (obviously)