SCL 3

WHAT IS RASPBERRY PI??

The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card-sized single-board computer developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games.

The Raspberry Pi is manufactured through licensed manufacturing deals with Element 14/Premier Farnell, RS Components and Egoman. All of these companies sell the Raspberry Pi online. Egoman produce a version that is only able to be distributed in China and Taiwan and can be distinguished from other Pis as they are Red and do not have the FCC/CE marks. All of the hardware is the same.

The Raspberry Pi has a Broadcom BCM2835 system on a chip (SoC), which includes an ARM1176JZF-S 700 MHz processor (The firmware includes a number of "Turbo" modes so that the user can attempt overclocking, up to 1 GHz, without affecting the warranty), VideoCore IV GPU, and was originally shipped with 256 megabytes of RAM, later upgraded to 512 MB. It does not include a built-in hard disk or solid-state drive, but uses an SD card for booting and long-term storage. The Foundation's goal is to offer two versions, priced at US$25 and US$35. The Foundation started accepting orders for the higher priced model B on 29 February 2012, and the lower cost model A on 4 February 2013.

The Foundation provides Debian and Arch Linux ARM distributions for download. Also planned are tools for supporting Python as the main programming language, with support for BBC BASIC, (via the RISC OS image or the "Brandy Basic" clone for Linux), C, and Perl.

On 17 December 2012 the Raspberry Pi Foundation, in collaboration with IndieCity and Velocix, opened the "Pi Store", as a "one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi (software) needs". Using an application included in Raspbian, users can browse through several categories and download what they want. Software can also be uploaded for moderation and release.