Wednesday, November 27th 2024

Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Officially Launches With Broadcom BCM2712 Quad-Core SoC

Today we're happy to announce the much-anticipated launch of Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5, the modular version of our flagship Raspberry Pi 5 single-board computer, priced from just $45.

An unexpected journey
We founded the Raspberry Pi Foundation back in 2008 with a mission to give today's young people access to the sort of approachable, programmable, affordable computing experience that I benefitted from back in the 1980s. The Raspberry Pi computer was, in our minds, a spiritual successor to the BBC Micro, itself the product of the BBC's Computer Literacy Project. But just as the initially education-focused BBC Micro quickly found a place in the wider commercial computing marketplace, so Raspberry Pi became a platform around which countless companies, from startups to multi-billion-dollar corporations, chose to innovate. Today, between seventy and eighty percent of Raspberry Pi units go into industrial and embedded applications.
While many of our commercial customers continue to use the "classic" single-board Raspberry Pi form factor, there are those whose needs aren't met by that form factor, or by the default set of peripherals that we choose to include on the SBC product. So, in 2014 we released the first Raspberry Pi Compute Module, providing just the core functionality of Raspberry Pi 1 - processor, memory, non-volatile storage and power regulation - in an easy-to-integrate SODIMM module.

Compute Modules make it easier than ever for embedded customers to build custom products which benefit from our enormous investments in the Raspberry Pi hardware and software platform. Every subsequent generation of Raspberry Pi, except for Raspberry Pi 2, has spawned a Compute Module derivative. And today, we're happy to announce the launch of Compute Module 5, the modular version of our flagship Raspberry Pi 5 SBC.

Meet Compute Module 5
Compute Module 5 gives you everything you love about Raspberry Pi 5, but in a smaller package:
  • A 2.4 GHz quad-core 64-bit Arm Cortex-A76 CPU
  • A VideoCore VII GPU, supporting OpenGL ES 3.1 and Vulkan 1.3
  • Dual 4Kp60 HDMI display output
  • A 4Kp60 HEVC decoder
  • Optional dual-band 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.0
  • 2 × USB 3.0 interfaces, supporting simultaneous 5 Gbps operation
  • Gigabit Ethernet, with IEEE 1588 support
  • 2 × 4-lane MIPI camera/display transceivers
  • A PCIe 2.0 x1 interface for fast peripherals
  • 30 GPIOs, supporting 1.8 V or 3.3 V operation
  • A rich selection of peripherals (UART, SPI, I2C, I2S, SDIO, and PWM)
It is available with 2 GB, 4 GB, or 8 GB of LPDDR4X-4267 SDRAM, and with 16 GB, 32 GB, or 64 GB of MLC eMMC non-volatile memory. 16 GB SDRAM variants are expected to follow in 2025.

Compute Module 5 is mechanically compatible with its predecessor, Compute Module 4, exposing all signals through a pair of high-density perpendicular connectors, which attach to corresponding parts on the customer's carrier board. Additional stability is provided by four M2.5 mounting holes arranged at the corners of the board.

There are a small number of changes to the pin-out and electrical behavior of the module, mostly associated with the removal of the two two-lane MIPI interfaces, and the addition of two USB 3.0 interfaces. A detailed summary of these changes can be found in the Compute Module 5 datasheet.

Accessories accessorize
But Compute Module 5 is only part of the story. Alongside it, we're offering a range of new accessories to help you get the most out of our new modular platform.

IO Board
Every generation of Compute Module has been accompanied by an IO board, and Compute Module 5 is no exception.

The Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 IO Board breaks out every interface from a Compute Module 5. It serves both as a development platform and as reference baseboard (with design files in KiCad format), reducing the time to market for your Compute Module 5-based designs.

The IO Board features:
  • A standard 40-pin GPIO connector
  • 2 × full-size HDMI 2.0 connectors
  • 2 × 4-lane MIPI DSI/CSI-2 FPC connectors (22-pin, 0.5 mm pitch cable)
  • 2 × USB 3.0 connectors
  • A Gigabit Ethernet jack with PoE+ support (requires a separate Raspberry Pi PoE+ HAT+)
  • An M.2 M-key PCIe socket (for 2230, 2242, 2260 and 2280 modules)
  • A microSD card socket (for use with Lite modules)
  • An RTC battery socket
  • A 4-pin fan connector
Power is provided by a USB-C power supply (sold separately).

IO Case
As in previous generations, we expect some users to deploy the IO Board and Compute Module combination as a finished product in its own right: effectively an alternative Raspberry Pi form factor with all the connectors on one side. To support this, we are offering a metal case which turns the IO Board into a complete encapsulated industrial-grade computer. The Raspberry Pi IO Case for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 includes an integrated fan, which can be connected to the 4-pin fan connector on the IO Board to improve thermal performance.
Cooler
While Compute Module 5 is our most efficient modular product yet in terms of energy consumed per instruction executed, like all electronic products it gets warm under load. The Raspberry Pi Cooler for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 is a finned aluminium heatsink, designed to fit on a Compute Module 5, and including thermal pads to optimize heat transfer from the CPU, memory, wireless module and eMMC.

Antenna Kit
Wireless-enabled variants of Compute Module 5 provide both an onboard PCB antenna, and a UFL connector for an external antenna. Use of the Raspberry Pi Antenna Kit (identical to that already offered for use with Compute Module 4) with Compute Module 5 is covered by our FCC modular compliance.
Development Kit
The Raspberry Pi Development Kit for Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 comprises a Compute Module 5, an IO Board, and all the other accessories you need to start building your own design:
  • CM5104032 (Compute Module 5, with wireless, 4 GB RAM, 32 GB eMMC storage)
  • IO Case for Compute Module 5
  • Compute Module 5 IO Board
  • Cooler for Compute Module 5
  • Raspberry Pi 27 W USB-C PD Power Supply (local variant as applicable)
  • Antenna Kit
  • 2 × Raspberry Pi standard HDMI to HDMI Cable
  • Raspberry Pi USB-A to USB-C Cable
The Development Kit provides an ideal environment for prototyping embedded applications; we hope it will prove useful to product design engineers who wish to build with Compute Module 5.

Early adopters
We're delighted that today's launch is accompanied by early announcements of Compute Module 5-based products from our commercial customers KUNBUS and TBS, who have built successful products on previous Raspberry Pi Compute Modules and whom we have supported to integrate our new module into their latest designs. Other customers are preparing to announce their own Compute Module 5-powered solutions over the next weeks and months. The world is full of innovative engineering companies of every scale, and we're excited to discover the uses to which they'll put our powerful new module; try Compute Module 5 for yourself and let us know what you build with it.
Source: Raspberry Pi
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12 Comments on Raspberry Pi Compute Module 5 Officially Launches With Broadcom BCM2712 Quad-Core SoC

#1
Chaitanya
Some early reviews are pointing to lack of cooling.
Posted on Reply
#2
Ferrum Master
ChaitanyaSome early reviews are pointing to lack of cooling.
My beef is not have PCIe here... or some PCIe splitter to justify the existence of it... Adaptor on adaptor... like money on money again, buy more stuff.

Also the PCB is so large... they would be smart like China often does, leave hole mounts from Intel LGA coolers, put some cheap Arctic cooler old stock intel most us have... case closed... even green thinking for reusing old gear and it would cool it in fantastic manner.

Also, why even the module is on the top surface not bottom, what with the infantile design choice. I just looked at that Jetway SBC... I even thought some large ATX motherboards doesn't have so much in there and so well thought as they have there and CPU should be on bottom so you can design a case to act as heat sink.
Posted on Reply
#3
TheLostSwede
News Editor
Ferrum MasterMy beef is not have PCIe here... or some PCIe splitter to justify the existence of it... Adaptor on adaptor... like money on money again, buy more stuff.
Like the M.2 slot you mean?
Ferrum MasterAlso the PCB is so large... they would be smart like China often does, leave hole mounts from Intel LGA coolers, put some cheap Arctic cooler old stock intel most us have... case closed... even green thinking for reusing old gear and it would cool it in fantastic manner.
Remember that this is for development, not for going straight into a product, in typical RPi fashion.
If they'd cared, they would've made a Pico-ITX board ages ago.
Ferrum MasterAlso, why even the module is on the top surface not bottom, what with the infantile design choice. I just looked at that Jetway SBC... I even thought some large ATX motherboards doesn't have so much in there and so well thought as they have there and CPU should be on bottom so you can design a case to act as heat sink.
I was involved in designing a board just like that, but the company behind it didn't quite have the funds to do the software end of it, so it kind of flopped.
Plus not the best SoC was used, but that wasn't on me. I hindsight I should've stuck with the RPi pin-out on the header and just extended it with USB though.
www.cnx-software.com/2019/08/23/project-x-a1-series-production-ready-pico-itx-sbc-allwinner-processor/

I'm just surprised it took them this long to do something like this.
Posted on Reply
#4
Ferrum Master
TheLostSwedeLike the M.2 slot you mean?
Yeah there are some boards with ASM1182, so you don't have to switch around things, you can code and build using more devices, as there is that AI board.... you need storage space and pretty fast one, so it ends up needing more PCIe lanes, like Pineboards BM2L-AIS.

RPI has turned into business project rather for education, it is pricey, clunky and limited in many things, I am still baffled that they disabled any media decoder in the RPi5, gimping it down. Can I whine about using miniHDMI instead of normal one or putting also display port, or at least 30/40 pin eDP to hook up any laptop LCD, at least leave the PCB pins, I can solder the connector on myself, the board is so underutilized, it can have much more vacant features, especially if it is for learning. eMMC lanes could be my biggest complaint... put the pads on at least, the CPU has the native support for it so if frees up the precious PCIe, but no... They will do foolish things for so long... the N100 like solutions will creep in as much better alternative like Radxa X4, and somehow they are not stupid, they have unpopulated eMMC if you wish, put on your own, buy one with populated one. It is much more easy to code on x86. It is not perfect also, but hey... we have a choice.

Sunxi... I am getting goosebumps, I have a Orange Pi Zero 2W, I took the cheapest one and replaced RAM IC to 4GB, because I had those from laptop boards as dirt, you know me, I like to play around sometimes with fishy hardware for the lulz, bootloader detects the RAM at boot and works like nothing happened. It is already an old IC, it got sound support in Linux kernel like just recently weeks ago. I use it as DIY HUE Bridge emulator, it works for that feature pretty fine for many months already, but any other distro/features I tried was pretty amusing, basically it was a paintrain.

Your board looks pretty good design wise, I like the power planes on edges, organisation, network could be isolated more, small nitpick is that lacks amount of through hole vias that should be stacked at the edges of the board to provide better ESD protection it costs nothing to implement it, they are there, but not enough. BT/WIFI, XR819... tough decision... even with philosophy involved... is better with or without it... does it work other SDIO wifis why opted out of it, certification?
Posted on Reply
#5
igormp
Ferrum MasterMy beef is not have PCIe here... or some PCIe splitter to justify the existence of it... Adaptor on adaptor... like money on money again, buy more stuff.
Adding to what was said above, it does have PCIe (single lane of 2.0, kinda lacking compared to other SoCs, but it's something), and you can do anything with it.
This IO board is just a reference design that you can use for development, but you are supposed to build your own board with whatever peripherals and form-factor you need, and then just plug the compute module in.
Ferrum Masterthe N100 like solutions will creep in as much better alternative like Radxa X4, and somehow they are not stupid, they have unpopulated eMMC if you wish, put on your own, buy one with populated one. It is much more easy to code on x86. It is not perfect also, but hey... we have a choice.
For a person that just wants to buy a single device to thinker with, or just a fleet to use as mini-PCs with no hard requirement on the power usage, this makes lots of sense, such product is way easier to use indeed.
But for someone that wants to build a product out of it with custom peripherals, specially mid-sized companies that can't afford building their own SBC from scratch, something like the RPi (in the CM form factor) is a way better option.
Different needs require different solutions, it's nice that we have plenty of options to chose from, as you said :)
Posted on Reply
#6
Ferrum Master
igormpFor a person that just wants to buy a single device to thinker with, or just a fleet to use as mini-PCs with no hard requirement on the power usage, this makes lots of sense, such product is way easier to use indeed.
But for someone that wants to build a product out of it with custom peripherals, specially mid-sized companies that can't afford building their own SBC from scratch, something like the RPi (in the CM form factor) is a way better option.
Different needs require different solutions, it's nice that we have plenty of options to chose from, as you said :)
RPI is kinda Jack of all trades good for nothing. Those mid sized company guys will just STM32 as proven SoC for any special needs if you do stuff from scratch starting from robots or drones, they use and will use it. This was ment for education, but kidna went nowhere... 25bucks yeah at start it was fine, but now you buy this, then heatsink and fan, then you need expansion board, adapter on adapter, obscure HDMI cable, the price ramps up rapidly, and hey... you venture into chepear NUC board realm... they are painless software wise as their software support is same as in desktop PC. Put your LTS kernel and you are good. That Radxa X4 is really awesome, more of it. It really gives you more flexibility.

Being ARM makes it harder to develop as it changes a lot still, you do either bare metal code like in the STM32 case or some tinylinux or x86, sorry but it will prevail, especially in education. They shot in their for not putting SDIO in RP2350 also... are they retarded for real? So for those really small special devices, there are even hybrids of that CPU and ESP32-C6 for the connectivity part. I am not sure whose genius was it for a developing platform gimp down features and limit it, you do it afterwards picking different CPU SKUs.
Posted on Reply
#7
igormp
Ferrum MasterRPI is kinda Jack of all trades good for nothing. Those mid sized company guys will just STM32 as proven SoC for any special needs if you do stuff from scratch starting from robots or drones, they use and will use it. This was ment for education, but kidna went nowhere... 25bucks yeah at start it was fine, but now you buy this, then heatsink and fan, then you need expansion board, adapter on adapter, obscure HDMI cable, the price ramps up rapidly, and hey... you venture into chepear NUC board realm... they are painless software wise as their software support is same as in desktop PC. Put your LTS kernel and you are good. That Radxa X4 is really awesome, more of it. It really gives you more flexibility.
I mean, yeah, RPi has the great benefit of an easy entry. I don't think STMicro has any Linux-capable SoC that's as easy to use as the other ones you see in those SBCs, and comparing MCUs to a full blown CPU SoC is really apples to oranges.
They really started out as education with cheap boards, but some people grew with it and started to build products out of it due to the low barrier, and I guess the RPi foundation rolled with it (hence those CM offerings).
One thing is using a single board as a mini-PC of for a one-off personal project, other is trying to scale it as a product, and for the latter the RPi CM really kicks ass.
Ferrum MasterBeing ARM makes it harder to develop as it changes a lot still, you do either bare metal code like in the STM32 case or some tinylinux or x86, sorry but it will prevail, especially in education.
If you're building your own stuff, it's not really any hard. Sure it does require some knowledge with cross-compiling some stuff, but for simple python stuff running on top of linux it's mostly a non-issue (although I might be biased since I'm really used to multi-arch deployments).
Just shove your favorite linux distribution in there and off you go, build whatever you wish on top of it.
Posted on Reply
#8
lexluthermiester
ChaitanyaSome early reviews are pointing to lack of cooling.
That is easily fixed.
Posted on Reply
#9
OSdevr
ChaitanyaSome early reviews are pointing to lack of cooling.
The regular RPi5 is the first RPi to need active cooling, that's expected.
Ferrum MasterMy beef is not have PCIe here... or some PCIe splitter to justify the existence of it... Adaptor on adaptor... like money on money again, buy more stuff.
The SOC actually has two PCIe lanes but one is taken up by the RP1 chipset, similarly to previous Pis having one that is used by either the USB3 controller or LAN (forget which). But on CM4 that PCIe lane was broken out to the back connector so you could use what you wanted. Why didn't they break both out for this one? I would guess backward compatibility except that the CM4 already broke backward compatibility with previous CMs. Is RP1 really that useful?
Ferrum MasterRPI is kinda Jack of all trades good for nothing. Those mid sized company guys will just STM32 as proven SoC for any special needs if you do stuff from scratch starting from robots or drones, they use and will use it. This was ment for education, but kidna went nowhere... 25bucks yeah at start it was fine, but now you buy this, then heatsink and fan, then you need expansion board, adapter on adapter, obscure HDMI cable, the price ramps up rapidly, and hey... you venture into chepear NUC board realm... they are painless software wise as their software support is same as in desktop PC. Put your LTS kernel and you are good. That Radxa X4 is really awesome, more of it. It really gives you more flexibility.
As @igormp said STM32 is a microcontroller line. It's for real time embedded use, the hobbyist equivalent is Arduino not RPi. Their memory sizes are in the KiB to low MiB range.
Posted on Reply
#10
Ferrum Master
OSdevrAs @igormp said STM32 is a microcontroller line. It's for real time embedded use, the hobbyist equivalent is Arduino not RPi. Their memory sizes are in the KiB to low MiB range.
It depends what you design, there is a middle area of appliances where you can do both. For example would you need a motor controller with screen, dash like car, e-scooter, drone whatever using RPi? FFS no, I would not ride it, don't want to be killed, considering it has erratas too, same as it renders the buggy ESP32 and RPI RISC V Zeros also out for anything serious, for mission critical tasks, due to buggy CPUs, so not for sale, just fun. The question raised from like small/middle company outlook, what they do, I have few around with my uni friends with private business making IoTs, few in Mikrotik, but that's heavy weight I am in RMA business occasionally being asked to build things as special gigs. If they have a choice to do bare metal code they will opt for the cheaper design, to have better margins, not to boot expensive ass Raspberry PI like ARM64 overkill. It is more easy to code on it, agree, but hey... don't cheat. Arduino, that's itallian business(imagine hand gestures), never had any official kit I never knew who they were when I was little, I did my Atmel with my own boards in different IDEs while I was young, ATMEL while fun... they have many problems too, it is sad to see those things in expensive devices these days, fun fact all my ATMEL devices like more than 10 years old are dead, I didn't care to look closer if it is memory or most probably internal oscillator. I steer away from those due to my personal experience, I rather do PICs then or... STM32 family that is used even in military.

I scratch my head about the PCIe question. I could do it for additional network card, SATA controller, more storage whatever, at least you can tinker around... or more importantly... put a GPU for the next reason, like someone debugging out the OS and driver needs to run them at last and then do coding as you would have more hardware accelerations. What is this box really for? You take the conventional PI5 with bunch of adapters. Altou I just looked more close and saw jumper section, the compute module has eMMC on the backside, CM4 had it on the face, so I wrote it off. Okay, at least something, 64GB as max size looks weird tho, what for the smaller ones are even being offered. But they do not offer a variant with a vacant space for you to solder on your IC.

Now we have problems, the AI came, some applications, like image video object recognition, especially if you do learning, that's the new stuff, like the original RPI idea comes from - to learn, so RPI shat themselves in this department and someone came up with that AI extension card crutch, so if you do higher level language, this device is a joke for that, too slow and now with missing HW video decoders, so software processed, btw that N100 has NPU capable igpu without need of buying anything else it is a Xe Alder Lake-N igpu, use google tensorflow-GPU binaries and go, no black magic involved ~110euros and you are good, this kit costs like 130$. If I would buy an xmas present for a fine looking lass, what would I pick...?

So... I look at the device, I bought along spare parts I ordered on Farnell to have free shipping... and it looks more like a toy for grown up men, not a development platform for actual needs, the more I dig into it, it is way too gimped. So for basic tasks, projects, then you really need this expensive ARM64 RPI5, what's the point of the additional horsepower here? To sell fans as on stock this thing overheats and throttles? For Gerling to do dry Ice overclocking rubbish? You are good with the RPI3B actually, as bonus it has a normal sized HDMI, found an adapter from a NOKIA N8 kit I had long ago for the RPI5, I knew some bastard would put it again some day for no real reason, in the silly level it looks almost British made... oh wait...
Posted on Reply
#11
OSdevr
Ferrum MasterIt depends what you design, there is a middle area of appliances where you can do both. For example would you need a motor controller with screen, dash like car, e-scooter, drone whatever using RPi? FFS no, I would not ride it, don't want to be killed, considering it has erratas too, same as it renders the buggy ESP32 and RPI RISC V Zeros also out for anything serious, for mission critical tasks, due to buggy CPUs, so not for sale, just fun. The question raised from like small/middle company outlook, what they do, I have few around with my uni friends with private business making IoTs, few in Mikrotik, but that's heavy weight I am in RMA business occasionally being asked to build things as special gigs. If they have a choice to do bare metal code they will opt for the cheaper design, to have better margins, not to boot expensive ass Raspberry PI like ARM64 overkill. It is more easy to code on it, agree, but hey... don't cheat. Arduino, that's itallian business(imagine hand gestures), never had any official kit I never knew who they were when I was little, I did my Atmel with my own boards in different IDEs while I was young, ATMEL while fun... they have many problems too, it is sad to see those things in expensive devices these days, fun fact all my ATMEL devices like more than 10 years old are dead, I didn't care to look closer if it is memory or most probably internal oscillator. I steer away from those due to my personal experience, I rather do PICs then or... STM32 family that is used even in military.
Then surely you must understand the difference between an application processor and a microcontroller. Yes there are high end uCs that you can drive an LCD with (often with basic 2D acceleration) and even add some external SDRAM to these days, but you're not running Ubuntu Desktop on them. And you can even run realtime kernels on an application processor (see Circle for RPi) but they're not designed nor optimized for that. The lines may have blurred in recent years but they are still different things. There are actually hybrid chips around (like in the BeagleBone) that include both application and uC cores so you can achieve both goals without needing separate chips. And of course there are uC, application and FPGA combos (like the Versals and some Zynqs) for those who want to be god.

As for the purpose of these, it's the same as with previous RPi CMs. They're for commercial applications as an off the shelf computer-on-module you can plug into something you'd rather spend your engineering resources on. Like my Seeed router that uses a RPi CM4, or kiosks for something less niche. They're not for hobbiests.
Posted on Reply
#12
trsttte
Looks cool, been waiting for this for a while. Pitty some of the modules are still backordered, like most of the lite versions (no emmc) or 16gb ram versions. The m.2 is a nice addition but I wish they added a proper pcie slot given recent tests with GPUs and even AI NPU's. It would for sure make things easier than using a bunch of adapters. Given the number of videos people like jeff geerling have done on the topic some 3rd party breakout boards with pcie slots are bound to appear.
Ferrum MasterRPI is kinda Jack of all trades good for nothing. Those mid sized company guys will just STM32 as proven SoC for any special needs if you do stuff from scratch starting from robots or drones, they use and will use it. This was ment for education, but kidna went nowhere... 25bucks yeah at start it was fine, but now you buy this, then heatsink and fan, then you need expansion board, adapter on adapter, obscure HDMI cable, the price ramps up rapidly, and hey... you venture into chepear NUC board realm... they are painless software wise as their software support is same as in desktop PC. Put your LTS kernel and you are good. That Radxa X4 is really awesome, more of it. It really gives you more flexibility.

Being ARM makes it harder to develop as it changes a lot still, you do either bare metal code like in the STM32 case or some tinylinux or x86, sorry but it will prevail, especially in education. They shot in their for not putting SDIO in RP2350 also... are they retarded for real? So for those really small special devices, there are even hybrids of that CPU and ESP32-C6 for the connectivity part. I am not sure whose genius was it for a developing platform gimp down features and limit it, you do it afterwards picking different CPU SKUs.
You're vastly missing the point of the raspberry pi and of the compute module. It started as an entry level computer for schools as cheap way to start teaching computer science. It quickly got hugely popular with everyone from hobbyists to companies developing new products and the scope was broadened with things like the compute modules.

The radxa you mention looks nice but like all the other competing products it has nowhere near the same level of community support and compatibility as the raspberry pi, even while using x86. Then there's the hole power problem and the need to interface with a microcontroller to do any meaningfull IO (it has an rpi2040 mcu for that). That's where the raspberry pi is king

The rpi 5, like the rpi 4 before it, got a lot more powerfull but also hotter. But the rpi 4 is still available and will continue to be for several years to come (another plus towards raspberry pi's). And besides throttling doesn't mean it stops working, jeff geerling even says it on the video, it's still faster than the CM4 while throttling.
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