Raspberry Pi has unveiled a brand new, cost-reduced entry within the Compute Module household of computers-on-modules (COMs) dubbed the Compute Module 0 (CM0) — beginning at simply $18, however presently accessible solely in China.
Unveiled this week on the China Worldwide Trade Honest in Shanghai, the Compute Module 0 takes the center of the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W — the RP3 system-in-package — and locations it on a high-pin-count castellated module rather more comparable in design to third-party microcontroller “stamps” than the Raspberry Pi Compute Module 4 or 5, developed in partnership with native agency Shanghai EDATEC.
Raspberry Pi has launched a low-cost Compute Module 0 (high) and service board (above) — however solely in China, for now. (📷: Raspberry Pi)
The RP3 provides the module 4 Arm Cortex-A53 processor cores working at as much as 1GHz and 512MB of LPDDR2 reminiscence, matching the Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, whereas elsewhere on the module is a Wi-Fi and Bluetooth radio module and a footprint for eMMC flash storage. There is a connector for an exterior antenna, however no different accessible ports — till you put in it on a service board at the very least.
For that, Raspberry Pi and its companion have introduced a easy $30 two-layer reference design that brings out micro-USB Host and energy connections, a microSD card slot, MIPI Show Serial Interface (DSI) and Digicam Serial Interface (CSI) connectors, a single full-size HDMI port, and the acquainted Raspberry Pi 40-pin general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) header — plus an unpopulated 0.1″ pin header for composite video output.
Being primarily based on the RP3 means the efficiency of the brand new Compute Module 0 will not come near the Compute Module 5, and even the Compute Module 4 — nevertheless it’s focusing on a really totally different market, with pricing reported by native information outlet IT House at round $18 for the bottom mannequin rising to $26 for the top-end module. It is also unique to the Chinese language market: Raspberry Pi engineer James Hughes has confirmed that the components are being marketed solely to “industrial Chinese language clients,” with no plans but introduced to launch the {hardware} internationally.
“CM0 is a cost-engineered modular product particularly for the Chinese language OEM market,” Raspberry Pi’s Eben Upton advised us by way of e mail. “It is principally a [Raspberry Pi] Zero 2 W reformatted as a castellated module. No plans to make it accessible outdoors China in the intervening time, however we’ll see how we get on.”
