"The Natural Philosopher" wrote in message
...
BartC wrote:


"Bob Eager" wrote in message
...
Since the Raspberry Pi will be with us soon-ish (well, about six weeks I
am told, for mine) does anyone have any interesting ideas about what
they
might do with it/them?

And what's special about it that it took six years to develop? (I used to
build prototype computer boards in a week or so.)

It isn't a computer board. Its custom chips. On a board.

How many chips have you ever designed?

One. (A simple graphics controller in the 80s, which I then prototyped with
some 120 TTLs and some RAM. But I wasn't happy about it as a product and it
wasn't committed to a gate array chip.)

In this case, they don't seem to be creating anything new, just combining
existing technologies (ARM processor, Broadcom video, Linux OS and so on).
Six years just seems a long time (admittedly some of that will be organising
large-scale production).

--
Bartc