Raspberry pi speculation
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Honestly, I think the Pi 4 is going to be great when it hits. However, I also think it will be the last in the Pi series that will be very useful to retro gamers.
The 3b does what it does perfectly except N64 is just slightly outside its grasp. It also can fall under 60fps with the most recent SNES9x core or with several other emulators when shaders are applied.
If the Pi 4 brings N64 within better reach and gives a performance boost to other emulators, that will be the capstone. It is extremely unlikely that any Pi in the semi-near future will manage PS2 or GC, so I think the Pi 4 will be bitter sweet.
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I hope for RPIZERO3W or a major driver update. Please not the RPI2A ...
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Pretty sure Eben said "2019 at the earliest" for the RPi4.
VideoCore5 is looking promising, with more than double the perf. of VC4. At the moment they're only integrating it into STB chips but I'd bet good money that BCM are developing a new, full-featured SoC with the Pi in mind.
After all, the only alternative is a different SoC vendor, and I'm sure the foundation wants to keep things as backwards-compatible as possible while maintaining the prices that made the RPi so popular.
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@stoo I saw a thing saying something about the mpeg2 licence expiring? Minimal impact for the pi I would imagine
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@herb_fargus I wonder if that will mean mp3 support on linux distros? Other than that, I'm not sure how useful that really is these days.
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@beldar MP3 patents expired April 2017. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/16/mp3_dies_nobody_noticed/
I think most distros have already moved MP3 decoders out of their non-free repos.
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@beldar MP3 (MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) patent expired in April 2017 in US, already expired in 2012 in the EU. MPEG2 refers to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MPEG-2.
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Of course, MP3 is popular because of its ubiquity, not because it's an amazing codec today. Technically it has been surpassed many, many times. Opus is awesome; modern, efficient, royalty-free and not patent-encumbered, but who is using it? Not many people.
Why? Because MP3 is highly supported, available almost everywhere and still "good enough".
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Anyway to go back to the main topic: I look forward to an eventual RPi4 sporting a new SoC with VideoCore V which will allow more addressable memory (no more 1G limit) and GLES 3.1 compliance (Vulkan support, better renderers - particularly for demanding emus like Dreamcast, N64, etc.).
Oh, and USB3 would be nice. I seem to recall an interview where Eben said the next SoC would probably support USB3 and use USB-C type connectors to deliver more power.
Faster and more powerful, basically :D
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I think it would be cool even just to have a pi3 with the footprint of a pi 0.
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http://www.alphr.com/raspberry-pi/1005103/raspberry-pi-4-release-date-rumours-specifications
Its been stated no new pi this year.
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@40wattrange said in Raspberry pi speculation:
http://www.alphr.com/raspberry-pi/1005103/raspberry-pi-4-release-date-rumours-specifications
Its been stated no new pi this year.
I read those quotes some time ago, it's not really anything new. I don't think anyone expected one this year tbh. I'm fine with that and not really in a rush to ditch the Pi 3 just yet. Elegance of sufficiency and all that. ;-) But I'd like to think like Stoo says above, that next year there's a Pi 4 coming with good improvements.
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@ranma I really hope so. I just upgraded to a pi3 not that long ago and now that I have pushed it to its limit I want more power! =) Oh for a stronger GPU!
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Frankly i think if foundation wait too long before upgrading the pi. Another company could gather enough steam to gather a community large enough to replace the pi altogether.
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@retrograde88 I don't think so.
RPi major goals are : all in one board, with low power consumption, for 35$. With an as open as possible hardware and software stack,
Numerous companies tried to concurrence RPi with more powerful boards, but none is ever approaching the support and community of the original ;)
Don't forget that gaming is a very specific usage of the RPi, a LOT of use cases don't really need more power or graphics, but relies on low power consumption, easy programming and optimized cost : NAS, domotic, webserver, media player, robotic, whatever you want it to do
It's the sum of all those potential usages that creates and maintain the community. -
@retrograde88 one of the primary reasons the pi community is as successful as it is, is because of the emphasis of software over hardware. There is no shortage of higher spec SOC's already but much of the device can't be properly utilised because they ship with dodgy kernels etc. The pi still is the preference for many because at least it works for the most part and if it doesn't it's more likely that someone else in the community will figure it out
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@msp430 what are you talking about? We got a comprehensive history of the pi!
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