Ready for a slice of Raspberry Pi?

Data from January's Royal Society Report 'Shut Down or restart?' which analysed the current state of computing education in schools, showed marked trends in the numbers of students achieving ICT or Computing qualifications, including a 60% decline in the numbers achieving A level Computing since 2003, a 34% decline at ICT A Level over the same period, and a 57% decline in ICT GCSE.

The report stated: "We appear to have succeeded in making many people comfortable with using the technology that we find around us, but this seems to have been at the expense of failing to provide a deeper understanding of the rigorous academic subject of computer science."

Indeed, last August, Google chairman Eric Schmidt, said the lack of proper computer science lessons in schools was hindering Britain’s chances of success in the digital media economy.

The Raspberry Pi is the work of the Raspberry Pi Foundation, a charitable organisation founded in 2009. It is supported by the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory and technology firm Broadcomm, whose system-on-a-chip powers the device.

The idea
The idea behind a tiny and cheap computer for kids came in 2006, when Dr Eben Upton and his colleagues at the University of Cambridge’s Computer Laboratory, including Rob Mullins, Jack Lang and Alan Mycroft, became concerned about the year-on-year decline in the numbers and skills levels of the A Level students applying to read Computer Science in each academic year. From a situation in the 1990s where most of the kids applying were coming to interview as experienced hobbyist programmers, the landscape in the 2000s was very different; a typical applicant might only have done a little web design.

Robert Mullins, co-founder of the Cambridge-based Raspberry Pi Foundation, said: "The primary goal was to build a low-cost computer that every child could own, and one where programming was the natural thing to do with it."

The designers were inspired by the likes of the Sinclair Spectrum and BBC Micro - computers that hugely boosted UK computer literacy. And like those classics, you can just plug Raspberry Pi into a TV and go. Unlike the 1980s machines, it has a reasonably powerful CPU and a serious graphics engine.

Plug in a TV (via HDMI) and a keyboard (via USB) and it can be used for many of the things that a desktop PC does -  spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It even plays high-definition video. The first version of the device, which sold out within minutes of going on sale on 29 February, is a simple circuit board without packaging, and has been snapped up by developers in order to write supporting code which can then be preinstalled on to later versions, expected to go on sale in the autumn with proper packaging.

The hardware
The Raspberry Pi processor is a 700MHz Broadcomm system on a chip with a Videocore 4 GPU. That provides OpenGL ES 2.0, hardware-accelerated OpenVG and 1080p HD video. There's 256MB of on-board RAM and sockets for HDMI, USB 2.0, RCA video, USB 2.0 and 3.5mm audio jacks, and power comes via a MicroUSB connector.

The model B, the first to be made available, adds a second USB 2.0 port and a 10/100 BaseT Ethernet connection. There's no Wi-Fi in either version, but you can easily hook up a USB Wi-Fi adapter. There's also no hard disk or SSD. It's designed to use SD cards for booting and storage, although a USB hard disk can also be used for storage, but not for booting.

The computer measures 85.60mm x 53.98mm x 17mm, with a little overlap for the SD card and connectors which project over the edges. Weighimng just 45g, the Raspberry Pi does not come with a real-time clock, so the operating system must use a network time server, or ask the user for time information at boot time to get access to time and date for file time and date stamping. However, a real-time clock with battery backup can be added.

The operating system
It is claimed that the Raspberry Pi will comfortably run various flavours of the open source Linux operating system, including Debian, Arch Linux ARM and Fedora 14 Remix.

Dr Eben Upton said of the popularity of the Pi: "We didn’t realise how successful this was going to be. Now we can concentrate on teaching people to program."

Education Secretary Michael Gove, who wants computer teaching to place greater emphasis on skills such as programming. He stated: "Initiatives like the Raspberry Pi scheme will give children the opportunity to learn the fundamentals of programming."

Web application developer and technology blogger Pete Nelson wrote on his site at www.petenelson.co.uk: "There is one industry that can turn things around for the UK – software. We have a strong heritage of computer hardware and software in this country but the beauty of manufacturing software is that it can be done by anyone, in any location with minimal start-up costs. The biggest cost by far is the cost of training people to be able to build software – although fairly easy to pick up the basics it’s still a craft that requires knowledge of engineering principles and practical experience."

Nelson continued: "This is where the Raspberry Pi can save us: it’s now affordable for the government to equip any child in this country with a machine which they could take home with them and play with.  Furthermore if the government keeps its promise to stop giving lessons about how to use Microsoft Word and start teaching some decent subjects we will soon have a generation of highly-skilled workers at our fingertips ready to export product to the world."

Further information
www.raspberrypi.org

Beginners Guide

Programming the Raspberry PI with Eben Upton

An introduction to Debian Linux

How to install Fedora Remix on an SD card