Raspberry Pi Production Begins

Raspberry Pi production began in early 2012 after the foundation finalized a board that could be sold at an unusually low price. Manufacturing a computer this cheaply required controlling not just component cost but board complexity, testing, packaging, and distributor margins.

The original Model B used a Broadcom BCM2835 SoC with a 700 MHz ARM11 CPU and VideoCore IV graphics. It initially shipped with 256 MB of RAM, booted from an SD card, and provided HDMI, USB, Ethernet, and GPIO. The board deliberately omitted a case, storage device, display, and power supply.

That stripped-down design made the Pi attractive for education and hobby use. Instead of hiding the hardware, it encouraged users to see a computer as a collection of accessible components that could be programmed, rewired, and repurposed.