[News] Raspberry Pi 4 with 8GB of RAM Announced

A new model of the flagship Raspberry Pi 4 has been announced today by the Raspberry Pi Foundation. The new 8GB of RAM model is now available, in addition to its previous 2GB and 4GB of RAM models. It will become the most expensive Raspberry Pi device out there today, costing buyers 75 USD or roughly 130 NZD today.

The Raspberry Pi 4 has been out for almost a year already, but they were unable to accommodate an 8GB of RAM model (despite the Pi 4’s BCM2711 chip being able to support it) from the outset due to a lack of an 8GB LPDDR4 memory package. Micron were able to start producing the part designed specifically for the Pi 4 earlier this year, which meant the new 8GB model was able to be released today.

No specs in the new Raspberry Pi 4 model has been changed apart from the RAM upgrade. However, some components on the board have been reshuffled in order for the new model to support the slightly higher peak currents required by the new memory package.

Raspberry says they have removed a switch-mode power supply from the right-hand side of the board next to the USB 2.0 sockets and added a new switcher next to the USB-C power connector.

While the Pi’s default operating system currently uses a 32-bit kernel, the Foundation has already started developing a 64-bit kernel operating system. It has released an early beta of the new OS today, and is built against the Debian arm64 architecture. You can find the beta image here.

Raspberry are also changing the official name of its OS, from Raspbian to Raspberry Pi OS. It hopes that this new name will make it easier for new users to find and use its OS.

The new 8GB of RAM Raspberry Pi 4 model is yet to be seen in NZ stores, even for pre-order at this time. Pricing is also not yet clear.

Comments