Raspberry Pi has bucked tech industry trends and cut prices for the 4 GB and 8 GB variants of its Compute Module 4.
The Compute Module 4 (CM4) debuted in 2020 and was a departure from the DDR2 SODIMM form factor that had gone before it. Earlier this year, a fully loaded variant with 8 GB RAM and 32 GB of eMMC storage could be had for $95. The price is now $85. A non-wireless 4 GB Lite variant, with no eMMC storage, has dropped from $50 to $45.
Pi supremo Eben Upton told El Reg that the change was about reflecting long-term trends in DRAM pricing in the company’s product lines. “If you look at all our modern products, we charge $5 per GB increment,” he said. “CM4 is a bit older and had a steeper curve, which led to the weird situation where high density CM5 was cheaper than the equivalent CM4. This tweak fixes that.”
The cut only applies to the standard operating temperature units rather than the variants aimed at colder environments. The price of the lower memory density units is also unchanged.
While useful work can be done on the 1 GB and 2 GB variants of the CM4, the extra headroom afforded by the 4 GB version will be welcomed by industry and enthusiasts alike. While the CM4 is not the latest and greatest Compute Module on offer – that is currently the beefier (and pricier) Compute Module 5 – the CM4 still has plenty of horsepower for less processor-intensive tasks.
Does this mean the lower density variants could be discontinued? “No plans to discontinue SKUs,” Upton replied. “I sold 900 Raspberry Pi 1B+ units last month.”
Dave Lee, a senior sales executive at Raspberry Pi, said: “There is a vast number of embedded use cases that don’t require the processing heft of our new-ish Compute Module 5; by lowering the cost of the higher-memory-density variants of its predecessor, we aim to make these projects more cost-effective, and to unlock new ones that previously weren’t viable.”
The cut is a welcome respite from seemingly relentless price increases over the years, albeit usually accompanied by a boost in performance. The latest top-end Pi 5, with 16 GB, blew past the $100 barrier earlier this year at $120. A far cry from the early days of the diminutive computer, where considerably less powerful examples could be picked up for less than $30.
For many applications, the processing power offered by a 16 GB Pi 5 isn’t required. A CM4 will be as happy running retro gaming systems as in an industrial setting. It might not have all the ports and connectors of a full-blown Raspberry Pi, but these can easily be added if required by the official I/O board or one of the many third-party options.
Perhaps it’s time to have a crack at your own CM4 Handheld retro gaming machine? ®
