Raspberry Pi Hardware Design Nears Production
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By late 2011, the Raspberry Pi team was moving from prototype boards toward mass production of a low-cost computer intended for programming education. Keeping the price around $25–$35 forced unusually strict hardware choices.
The first board centered on Broadcom’s BCM2835 system-on-chip, combining an ARM11 CPU with a VideoCore IV GPU. It booted from an SD card and exposed HDMI, USB, audio, and GPIO pins. There was no conventional hard disk, case, or included monitor. Those omissions were deliberate: the goal was to make the computer cheap enough for experimentation.
The GPIO header made the device more than a tiny Linux PC. Programs could interact directly with sensors, LEDs, motors, and other electronics. That combination of software and physical computing became one of the reasons the board found a much larger audience than its creators initially expected.