Page 35 - EngineerIt February 2021

NEW PRODUCTS AND INNOVATION

New Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB Starter Kit With 8GB of LPDDR4 RAM memory, the
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B supplied in the kit
can outperform many desktop PCs. The
S Components (RS), and OKdo have and USB cables, an SD card reader, and an Raspberry Pi 4 Model B also features two
announced the exclusive availability of aluminium case with fan and heatsinks, micro-HDMI ports, meaning it can drive two
Ra starter kit based on the 8GB version along with OKdo’s ‘get started’ guide and ‘get external displays at the same time at up to
of the latest Raspberry Pi single-board inspired’ project handbook. 4Kp60 resolution. The two micro-HDMI to
computer (SBC). As stated, in addition to an aluminium HDMI leads supplied in the kit allow users
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B with 8GB of case and cooling fan, the kit also includes to make use of this new feature for even
RAM is the most powerful version of the three heatsinks that can be attached directly easier connection.
Raspberry Pi SBC produced to date and the to the board’s processor, the RAM and the The processor on the Raspberry Pi 4
kit provides everything needed to take full USB controller. These hardware features Model B is the most capable ever to be
advantage of that performance. This includes enable users to make full use of the used in a Raspberry Pi; the Broadcom
a 32GB MicroSD card pre-loaded with Linux processor’s maximum operating speed of BCM2711 is a quad-core processor
®
(NOOBS 3.1.1), a 5V power supply, HDMI 1.5GHz. featuring four Arm Cortex -A72 64-bit
®
cores based on the Armv8 architecture.
Furthermore, the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B
extends its interface options and now offers
two USB 3.0 ports alongside the two USB
2.0 ports. This is complemented by 2.4GHz
and 5.0GHz IEEE 802.11b/g/n/ac and
Bluetooth 5.0 BLE wireless connectivity, as
well as Gigabit Ethernet.
The Raspberry Pi 4 Model B development
kit with 8GB RAM, developed by OKdo and
available through OKdo and RS globally,
really does give makers and engineers easy
access to the most powerful SBC available
today. It can form the basis for the latest and
most demanding applications in the fields of
AI, robotics and Industry 4.0. Despite this
high performance, it still provides easy
access for educators and students to explore
the highest level of processing performance
at an entry-level price. n

More info from https://za.rs-online.com/web/

®
Microchip launch world’s first PCI Express 5.0 Switches

pplications such as data analytics, autonomous-driving and
medical diagnostics are driving extraordinary demands for
Amachine learning and hyperscale compute infrastructure. To meet
these demands, Microchip Technology Inc announced the world’s first
PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 switch solutions, doubling the interconnect
performance for dense compute, high speed networking and NVM
Express (NVMe ) storage.
®
®
“Accelerators, graphic processing units (GPUs), central processing
units (CPUs) and high-speed network adapters continue to drive the
need for higher performance PCIe infrastructure. Microchip’s introduction
of the world’s first PCIe 5.0 switch doubles the PCIe Gen 4 interconnect
link rates to 32 GT/s to support the most demanding next-generation
machine learning platforms. The Switchtec PFX PCIe 5.0 switch family data rates of 32 GT/s, signal integrity and complex system topologies
comprises high density, high reliability switches supporting 28 lanes to pose significant development and debug challenges
100 lanes and up to 48 non-transparent bridges (NTBs). The Switchtec Microchip has released a full set of design-in collateral, reference
technology devices support high reliability capabilities, including hot- designs, evaluation boards and tools to support customers building
and surprise-plug as well as secure boot authentication. With PCIe 5.0 systems that take advantage of the high-bandwidth of PCIe 5.0. n

EngineerIT | February 2021 | 33