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[SITUATION] · [ACTIVE] · [TECHNOLOGY]
2 clusters · 6 sources · 1 days · First seen · Last updated
Raspberry Pi hardware and RAM capacity restrictions
Overview
The Raspberry Pi ecosystem is experiencing changes to hardware availability and memory management. A new 3GB RAM variant of the Raspberry Pi 4B has been released as a cost-effective option for IoT and automation applications in response to rising DRAM prices.
Concurrently, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has implemented hardware-level restrictions via bootloader changes. These updates effectively lock devices, including the Raspberry Pi 4, Pi 5, and Compute Modules, to their original factory RAM capacity. Even if a user physically replaces soldered memory chips with higher-capacity components, the system will continue to report the original capacity. The company stated this design choice is intended to prevent gray-market resellers from swapping modules for profit, which could lead to stability issues and unsupported configurations. While these restrictions impact upgrades, they do not prevent board repairs and may potentially be bypassed by reflashing older bootloader versions via the SPI flash chip.
Entities
Timeline
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3 days ago
[TECHNOLOGY] 2 sourcesRaspberry Pi introduces 3GB RAM model amid hardware upgrade restrictionsRaspberry Pi has introduced a 3GB RAM variant of the Pi 4B, while new bootloader changes from the Foundation limit the ability to upgrade RAM on Pi 4 and Pi 5 models.
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3 days ago
[TECHNOLOGY] 4 sourcesRaspberry Pi locks RAM capacity while Micron unveils 512 GB DDR5 moduleRaspberry Pi confirms hardware locks prevent RAM upgrades on Compute Module 5, while Micron unveils a high-capacity 512 GB DDR5 module for AI servers.
Sources
blogspan.net · borncity.com · drweb.de · electronicsweekly.com · hackaday.com · teltarif.de