Final PCB Design Revealed For The $25 Computer That Can Run Quake III

Not pictured: Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner on lightcycles.

The $25 Raspberry Pi computer (which can run Quake III) is still on track for wide release next year. The ARM GNU/Linux box is intended to affordably teach programming, and now they’ve released the Gerbers (visualization of the printed circuit board) for us to gawk at. It’s going to be a 6-layer PCB, and it’s designed to be the same exact size as a credit card (85.60mm x 53.98mm). Along with the ports and the BCM2835 chip in the center, this $25 computer should be about the thickness of a deck of cards, maybe less. Holy crap this thing is tiny and cheap. Now consider that it’s probably going to have a 700MHz ARM11 processor, 128MB of SDRAM, and enough graphics power to display 1080p videos (fuller specs here). Is this real life?

The picture to the right should give a better idea of the size the computer will be. Raspi explains:

One of our forum members has mocked up a 1:1 scale card model of the board, and put it next to a quarter for scale, with some components like those you’ll see on the real board [a stacked USB port and a cat5 connector] laid on top.

So that’s a cool business card, but I bet it doesn’t run Crysis.

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