The highly anticipated Raspberry Pi 4 is the latest iteration of the much beloved single board computer. It was launched earlier this week, and to highlight its computation capabilities, the Raspberry Foundation decided to host its entire website on a cluster composed of 18 Raspberry Pi 4s.
To scale this, 14 of these Raspberries handled PHP code execution. Two-handled static server files and two handled the Memcached. While this is a remarkable feat of computing and an excellent marketing strategy, it is important to note that Cloudflare still handles the bulk of the network traffic. And to be fair, the database is still hosted on WordPress's website. Because of this setup, the Raspberry site went down for a brief period during the board's official launch.
The new Raspberry Pi has tons of upgrades compared to its immediate predecessor, the Raspberry Pi 3. At its heart is a new and powerful ARM processor supported by DDR4 memory. It now supports the ultra-fast gigabit Ethernet protocol. In the paper, this new tiny Raspberry upgrade is just as powerful as an entry-level personal computer running on an x86 architecture.
The most noticeable upgrade of the Raspberry Pi 4 is the new 64-bit ARM Cortex-A72 processor running at 1.5GHz. It is about three times faster than the processor of the Pi 3. As for its memory, it is available in three models: 1GB, 2GB, or 4GB, all LPDDR4 SDRAM variants.
As for its supporting protocols, the Pi 4 now supports Gigabit Ethernet, the usual dual-band 802.11ac wireless adapter, and Bluetooth 5.0. It has four USB ports, two 3.0 and two 2.0.
What is even more impressive about the Pi 4 is it now supports up to 4K resolution. It is important to note here that the board only supports 4K resolution; this does not mean that it can play or stream 4K videos. A recent stress test revealed that the board has some issues with 4K video playback. The board struggles even when just streaming standard 1080p HD videos. Given its CPU's raw power, it is no wonder why it can pull this one off. This certainly dismisses the tiny computer as viable hardware when building a cheap media system that can play at least 1080p videos.
The Raspberry Pi 4 costs $35, not bad for a miniature computer that has a lot of potentials to offer.
