Telecommunications:

Introduction:

Information can be transmitted using a variety of technologies via wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems. This is known as telecommunication. As a result, slow systems (like postal mail) are not included in the field. It has its roots in humans' need for communication at a distance greater than what is possible with the human voice, but with a similar level of expediency.

 

Telecommunications

From beacons and other visual signals (such as smoke signals, semaphore telegraphs, signal flags, and optical heliographs), to electrical cable and electromagnetic radiation, including light, the transmission media in telecommunication have progressed through several technological stages. The advantages of multiplexing many concurrent communication sessions are made possible by the division of such transmission pathways into communication channels. The plural of telecommunication is frequently used.

 

Audio communications like loud whistles, lung-blown horns, and coded drumbeats were also used in ancient long-distance communication. The majority of long-distance communication technologies used in the 20th and 21st centuries are electrical and electromagnetic in nature. Examples include the telegraph, telephone, television, teleprinter, networks, radio, microwave transmission, optical fiber, and communications satellites.

 

With the groundbreaking advancements in radio communications made by Guglielmo Marconi, who won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1909, and other eminent pioneering inventors and developers in the field of electrical and electronic telecommunications, a revolution in wireless communication started in the first decade of the 20th century. These included Edwin Armstrong and Lee de Forest (inventors of radio), Charles Wheatstone and Samuel Morse (inventors of the telegraph), Antonio Meucci and Alexander Graham Bell (some of the inventors and developers of the telephone; see Invention of the telephone), and Vladimir K. Zworykin, John Logie Baird, and Philo Farnsworth (some of the inventors of television).

 

Telecommunication is defined as "Any transmission, emission or reception of signs, signals, letters, images and sounds or intelligence of any sort by wire, radio, optical, or other electromagnetic systems" in Article 1.3 of the Radio Regulations (RR). This definition is the same as that found in the International Telecommunication Union's Constitution and Convention Annex (Geneva, 1992).

 

Telecommunications

The physical medium for signal transmission in the first telecommunication networks was copper wires. These networks were utilized for basic phone services, such as voice and telegrams, for a very long time. As the popularity of the internet has increased since the mid-1990s, voice has increasingly given way to data. This quickly illustrated the data transmission limitations of copper, which sparked the invention of optics.

 

History:

1) Pigeons:

 

Different societies have employed homing pigeons throughout history. The Romans later exploited the Persian-born pigeon post to aid their armies. Frontinus asserted that Julius Caesar sent messages across Gaul using pigeons. The Greeks also used homing pigeons to send the names of the Olympic Games winners to distant places. The technique was utilized in Java and Sumatra by the Dutch administration at the start of the 19th century. Additionally, Paul Julius Reuter began a pigeon service in 1849 to fly stock prices between Aachen and Brussels. This service ran for a year until the telegraph link's gap was closed.

 

On hilltops, chains of beacons were frequently utilized in the Middle Ages to transmit signals. Because beacon chains could only transmit a single piece of information, it was necessary to come to an agreement in advance as to what a message like "the enemy has been sighted" meant. Their employment during the Spanish Armada is notable because a beacon chain carried a signal from Plymouth to London during that time.

 

French engineer Claude Chappe constructed the first fixed visual telegraphy system (also known as a semaphore line) between Lille and Paris in 1792. However, semaphore was hampered by the requirement for expensive towers spaced ten to thirty kilometers apart and expert operators (six to nineteen miles). The final commercial line was abandoned in 1880 as a result of competition from the electrical telegraph.

 

2) Telegraph and telephone:

Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone of England exhibited the first commercial electrical telegraph on July 25, 1837. As opposed to being a brand-new invention, both creators saw their creation as "an upgrade to the [existing] electromagnetic telegraph."

 

On September 2, 1837, Samuel Morse made an unsuccessful attempt to show an electrical telegraph that he had independently developed. His code represented a significant improvement over Wheatstone's signaling system. On July 27, 1866, the first transatlantic telegraph wire was successfully installed, opening the way for intercontinental communication.

 

Alexander Bell received a patent for the standard telephone in 1876. In 1876, Elisha Gray also submitted a caveat for it. Gray dropped his caveat, and on March 3, 1876, the examiner granted Bell's patent because he did not oppose Bell's priority. Although Bell was the first to document and test the variable resistance telephone, Gray had already filed his caveat.  Nearly 30 years earlier, in 1849, Antonio Meucci created a system that permitted electrical speech transmission over a line, but it was of limited practical utility because it relied on the electrophonic effect, forcing users to place the receiver in their lips to "hear."The Bell Telephone Company established the first commercial telephone services in the cities of New Haven and London on both sides of the Atlantic in 1878 and 1879.

 

3) Television and radio:

Guglielmo Marconi, an Italian inventor, started working on a wireless communication system in 1894 using the recently discovered phenomena of radio waves. By 1901, he demonstrated that radio waves could be broadcast over the Atlantic Ocean. This marked the advent of radio-based wireless telegraphy. The first radio message from North America to cross the Atlantic was sent on December 17, 1902, from the Marconi station in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. A for-profit service was started in 1904 to provide nightly news summaries to subscribing ships, who then used them to update their onboard newspapers.

 

The development of radio for military communications was pushed during World War I. Commercial radio AM broadcasting started in the 1920s and rose to prominence as a major news and entertainment medium after the war. The development of radio for military uses such as radar, radio navigation, and aircraft and land communication was once more accelerated by World War II. In order to replace AM as the preeminent commercial standard, stereo FM transmission of radio started in the 1930s in the United States and the 1970s in the United Kingdom.

 

John Logie Baird gave a demonstration of moving picture transmission on March 25, 1925, at Selfridges in London. The mechanical television was created by Baird and was based on the Nipkow disk. It served as the foundation for the British Broadcasting Corporation's experimental transmissions, which got underway on September 30, 1929.  However, televisions relied on Karl Braun's cathode ray tube for the most of the 20th century. Philo Farnsworth created the first prototype of such a television that showed promise, which he showed to his family on September 7, 1927. Television emerged as a significant home entertainment broadcast medium with the resumption of stopped trials following World War II.

 

4) Thermionic valves:

A number of fundamental electronic operations, including signal amplification and current rectification, are performed by thermionic emission of electrons from a heated cathode in a device known as a thermionic tube or thermionic valve.

 

The heated electron-emitting cathode and anode are the only components of the diode, which John Ambrose Fleming created in 1904 and is the simplest vacuum tube. Through the gadget, electrons can only move from the cathode to the anode in one direction. By including one or more control grids inside the tube, the voltage on the grid or grids can be used to regulate the current flowing between the cathode and anode.These innovations were essential to the creation of radio, television, radar, sound recording and reproduction, long-distance telephone networks, and analogue and early digital computers. They also formed a major part of electrical circuits throughout the first half of the 20th century. Although certain applications had used older technology, such as the spark gap transmitter for radio or mechanical computers for computing, it was the development of the thermionic vacuum tube that made these technologies popular and useful, which eventually led to the development of electronics.

 

Solid-state devices, which are more efficient, dependable, and long-lasting than thermionic tubes, are smaller, less expensive, and more versatile thanks to the development of semiconductor devices in the 1940s. The transistor began to take the place of thermionic tubes in the middle of the 1960s. There are still some high-frequency amplifiers that use thermonuclear tubes.

 

Telecommunications

5) Internet and computer networks:

George Stibitz used a teletype on September 11, 1940, to transfer questions for his Complex Number Calculator from New York to Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where the results were computed. Long into the 1970s, this setup of a centralized computer (mainframe) and distant dumb terminals was still common. Research on packet switching, a method that transmits messages in chunks to their destinations asynchronously without going via a centralized mainframe, began in the 1960s. The ARPANET started as a four-node network on December 5th, 1969, and by 1981 it had expanded to 213 nodes. The ARPANET and other networks eventually came together to establish the Internet.Other networking developments, such as the local area network (LAN) developments of Ethernet (1983) and Token Ring (1994), occurred in industrial laboratories while Internet development was the focus of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which published a series of Request for Comments documents (1984).

 

6) Transmission capacity expansion:

Through two-way communications networks, the effective capacity to share information increased from 281 petabytes (pB) of ideally compressed data in 1986 to 471 pB in 1993 to 2.2 exabytes (eB) in 2000 to 65 eB in 2007. In terms of information, this equates to two newspaper pages per person day in 1986 and six whole newspapers daily in 2007. Due to this expansion, the telecommunications sector is becoming more and more crucial to the global economy, with a $4.7 trillion market in 2012. In 2010, it was predicted that the global telecommunications business generated service revenues of $1.5 trillion, or 2.4% of the global GDP (GDP).

 

Optical fiber:

Introduction:

A flexible, transparent fiber known as an optical fiber—or optical fiber in Commonwealth English—is created by pulling glass (silica) or plastic to a diameter just a hair's width thicker. In fiber-optic communications, where they enable transmission over greater distances and at higher bandwidths (data transfer rates) than electrical cables, optical fibers are most frequently employed as a way to send light between the two ends of the fiber. Fibers are utilized in place of metal cables because they have lower transmission loss and are immune to electromagnetic interference, which metal lines are susceptible to.Additionally employed for illumination and imaging, fibers are frequently wrapped in bundles so they can be used, as in the case of a fiberscope, to carry light into or images out of small locations. Additional uses for specially created fibers include fiber optic sensors and fiber lasers, among many others.

Optical fiber

 

Optical fibers typically consist of a transparent cladding material with a reduced index of refraction surrounding the core. Total internal reflection, which makes the fiber function as a waveguide and keeps light inside the core, is a physical phenomena. Multi-mode fibers are ones that support many propagation paths or transverse modes, whereas single-mode fibers only support one mode (SMF).When significant power must be transmitted over short distances, multi-mode fibers are used since they often have a greater core diameter. Most communication lines greater than 1,000 meters employ single-mode fibers (3,300 ft).

 

In fiber optic communication, the ability to link optical fibers with little loss is crucial. This requires meticulous fiber cleaving, exact alignment of the fiber cores, and coupling of these aligned cores. It is more difficult than combining electrical wire or cable. A fusion splice is frequently used for applications that require a lasting connection.This method involves melting the fiber ends together with an electric arc. A mechanical splice is another typical procedure in which the fiber ends are held together by mechanical force. Specialized optical fiber connectors are used to create temporary or semi-permanent connections.

 

Fiber optics refers to the branch of applied science and engineering that deals with the creation and use of optical fibers. Indian-American physicist Narinder Singh Kapany is credited with coining the phrase. 

 

Optical fiber

Applications of Optical Fiber:

Where a connect/disconnect capability is needed, optical fiber connectors are utilized to link optical fibers. Connectors are frequently installed onto optical fiber in a supplier's production facility due to the polishing and tuning methods that may be used in optical connector manufacturing. To end lengthy runs at a patch panel, for instance, the assembling and polishing procedures might be done on the spot.

 

To link equipment and fiber-optic cables or to cross-connect cables, optical fiber connectors are used in telephone exchanges, for customer premises wiring, and in outside plant applications.

 

The majority of optical fiber connections have a spring-loaded mechanism, which presses the fiber faces together during mating. By creating a glass-to-glass or plastic-to-plastic contact, signal losses brought on by an air gap between the linked fibers are eliminated.

 

Insertion loss and return loss are two metrics that can be used to measure optical fiber connector performance. These parameters' measurements are currently specified in IEC standard 61753-1. The standard assigns insertion loss five grades, ranging from A (best) to D (worst), as well as M for multimode. Return loss is the additional parameter, with grades ranging from 1 (best) to 5. (worst).

 

There are many different kinds of optical fiber connectors available, but SC and LC connectors are the most used ones. Connectors typically have a 500–1,000 mating cycle rating. The dimensions and mechanical connection techniques of different connector types are what differentiate them most. Generally, depending on the equipment they frequently employ, businesses will standardize on one type of connector.

 

Optical fiber

Small (e.g., LC) and multi-fiber (e.g., MTP/MPO) connectors have replaced earlier, bigger designs (e.g., SC) in many data center applications, allowing more fiber ports per unit of rack space.

 

Connector placement on utility poles, external walls, or underground may be necessary for applications involving outside plants. Protective enclosures are frequently employed in these contexts and can be divided into two categories: hermetic (sealed) enclosures and free-breathing enclosures. Hermetic cases keep out moisture and air but, without ventilation, can get hot if they're exposed to the sun or other heat sources. On the other side, free-breathing enclosures permit ventilation but may also let in moisture, insects, and airborne toxins. The type of cable and connector, the location, and environmental considerations all affect how the right housing is chosen.

 

Nanoelectronics:

Introduction:

The use of nanotechnology to electronic components is known as nanoelectronics. The fact that they are so small necessitates a thorough understanding of interatomic interactions and quantum mechanical features, which unites the term's varied range of devices and materials. These contenders include sophisticated molecular electronics, one-dimensional nanotubes or nanowires (such as silicon or carbon nanowires), and hybrid molecular and semiconductor electronics.

 

Nanoelectronics

Critical dimensions for nanoelectronic devices range from 1 nm to 100 nm in size. The 22 nanometer CMOS (complementary MOS) node and succeeding 14 nm, 10 nm, and 7 nm FinFET (fin field-effect transistor) generations are recent silicon MOSFET (metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor, or MOS transistor) technological generations that are already within this domain. Because the contenders currently under consideration differ greatly from conventional transistors, nanoelectronics is occasionally referred to as a disruptive technology.

 

Gordon Moore noticed that silicon transistors were continuously scaling down in 1965; this observation later became known as Moore's law. As of 2019, transistor minimum feature sizes have dropped from 10 micrometres to a range of 10 nanometers since his observation. Note that the minimum feature size is not a straight representation of the technology node. By utilising novel techniques and materials to create electrical devices with nanoscale feature sizes, the discipline of nanoelectronics seeks to facilitate the continuous implementation of this law.

 

History:

A. Rose developed and demonstrated metal nanolayer-base transistors in 1960, while Atalla, Kahng, and Geppert did the same in 1962. Geppert, Atalla, and Kahng created the first nanolayer-base metal-semiconductor junction transistor in 1962 using gold (Au) thin films with a 10 nm thickness. A metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) with a 10 nm gate oxide thickness was demonstrated in 1987 by an IBM research team under the direction of Bijan Davari.

 

Beginning with the FinFET (fin field-effect transistor), a three-dimensional, non-planar, double-gate MOSFET, multi-gate MOSFETs allowed scaling down 20 nm gate length. The DELTA transistor was created in 1989 by Digh Hisamoto, Toru Kaga, Yoshifumi Kawamoto, and Eiji Takeda at Hitachi Central Research Laboratory. A research team at UC Berkeley was given a contract by DARPA in 1997 to create a deep sub-micron DELTA transistor. The team included Hisamoto, Chenming Hu from TSMC, Tsu-Jae King Liu, Jeffrey Bokor, Hideki Takeuchi, K. Asano, Jakub Kedziersk, Xuejue Huang, Leland Chang, Nick Lindert, Shibly Ahmed, and Cyrus Tabery, as well as other researchers from around the world. In 1998 and 2001, the team successfully manufactured FinFET devices using processes as small as 15 nm.A group led by Yu, Chang, Ahmed, Hu, Liu, Bokor, and Tabery produced a 10 nm FinFET device in 2002.

 

A CMOS (complementary MOS) transistor created in 1999 at the Grenoble, France-based Laboratory for Electronics and Information Technology explored the limits of the MOSFET transistor's operating principles. This transistor had an 18 nm diameter (approximately 70 atoms placed side by side). Theoretically, it made it possible to fit seven billion connections onto a €1 coin. The CMOS transistor was a demonstration of how this technology works now that we are coming closer to working on a molecular scale rather than a simple research experiment to explore how CMOS technology works.According to Jean-Baptiste Waldner in 2007, it would be hard to both master and produce on an industrial scale the coordinated construction of several of these transistors on a circuit.

 

The world's smallest nanoelectronic device, a 3 nm MOSFET, was created in 2006 by a group of Korean researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the National Nano Fab Center. Gate-all-around (GAA) FinFET technology served as its foundation.

 

The 2010s saw the start of commercial nanoelectronic semiconductor device manufacture. The commercial mass manufacturing of a 16 nm process by SK Hynix, a 16 nm FinFET technology by TSMC, and a 10 nm class process by Samsung Electronics all started in 2013. Samsung started producing using a 5 nm process in 2018, while TSMC started using a 7 nm process in 2017. A 3 nm process will be commercially produced by TSMC by 2022, according to plans made public in 2017. Samsung stated in 2019 that it would implement a 3 nm GAAFET (gate-all-around FET) technique by 2021.

 

 

Microelectronics

A branch of electronics is microelectronics. Microelectronics, as the name implies, is the study and production (or microfabrication) of extremely small electronic designs and components. This typically, though not always, refers to micrometer-scale or smaller. Typically, semiconductor materials are used to construct these devices. There are microelectronic equivalents for many parts used in conventional electronic design. Microelectronic devices often contain transistors, capacitors, inductors, resistors, diodes, and (naturally) insulators and conductors. The exceptionally small size of the components, leads, and pads necessitates the employment of novel wiring techniques such wire bonding. This method is costly and necessitates specialist equipment.

Microelectronics

Numerous billions of transistors, resistors, diodes, and capacitors make up digital integrated circuits (ICs).  Resistors and capacitors are frequently seen in analogue circuits as well. Although inductors have a lower reactance at low frequencies than capacitors, they are nonetheless used in some high frequency analogue circuits. They can be replaced with gyrators in many situations.

The size of microelectronic components has decreased as technology have advanced[citation needed]. The proportional importance of inherent circuit characteristics, such as interconnections, may increase at lower scales. The aim of the microelectronics design engineer is to find ways to account for or limit these parasitic effects while producing smaller, quicker, and less expensive devices.

Electronic Design Automation software plays a significant role in the design of microelectronics today.

 

Asus:

Introduction:

A global Taiwanese firm called ASUSTek Computer Inc. is based in Taipei's Beitou District and manufactures computer and phone hardware and electronics. Computers, laptops, netbooks, smartphones, networking gear, projectors, monitors, wireless routers, motherboards, graphics cards, optical storage, peripherals, wearables, servers, workstations, and tablet PCs are among the company's offerings. The business also produces original equipment (OEM).

 

Asus

As of January 2021, Asus was the fifth-largest PC seller in the world by unit sales.  With a total brand worth of $1.3 billion, Asus came in first place in the IT Hardware category of the 2008 Taiwan Top 10 Global Brands survey and is listed in BusinessWeek's "InfoTech 100" and "Asia's Top 10 IT Companies" rankings.

 

With the ticker code 2357 for its primary listing on the Taiwan Stock Exchange, Asus once also had a secondary listing with the ticker ASKD for its secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange.

 

History:

T. H. Tung, Ted Hsu, Wayne Hsieh, and M.T. Liao, who had all previously worked as hardware engineers at Acer, formed Asus in Taipei in 1989. Taiwan had not yet established a dominant position in the computer hardware industry at this time. Taiwanese businesses would have to wait for roughly six months after IBM received its engineering prototypes before Intel Corporation would start selling any new processors to larger, more established businesses like IBM. Asus built a motherboard prototype for an Intel 486 but was unable to do it because it lacked access to the actual chip, according to company history.When Asus asked Intel for a processor to test, Intel was struggling with a 486 motherboard of its own. Intel's issue was resolved by Asus, and it turned out that Asus' own motherboard worked well without further tinkering. Since then, Asus has been getting engineering samples from Intel before its rivals.

 

Asus released the first PhysX accelerator card in September 2005. With the TLW32001 model, Asus entered the LCD TV market in December 2005. Asus stated in January 2006 that it would work with Lamborghini to create the VX laptop line.

 

Along with Samsung and Founder Technology, Asus was officially announced as one of the initial Microsoft Origami model producers on March 9, 2006. Asus and Gigabyte Technology established a joint venture on August 8, 2006. The Eee PC was introduced by Asus on June 5, 2007, at COMPUTEX Taipei. On September 9, 2007, Asus announced the debut of the BC-1205PT, a BD-ROM/DVD writer PC drive, indicating support for Blu-ray. A number of Blu-ray-based notebooks were subsequently developed by ASUS.

 

In January 2008, Asus started a significant reorganisation of its business, dividing into three different companies: Asus (focused on first-party applied electronics and computers), Pegatron (focused on motherboard and component OEM production), and Unihan Corporation (focused on non-PC manufacturing such as cases and molding). The severely criticised pension-plan reorganisation that took place during the restructuring effectively cancelled out the previous pension balances. All past employee contributions were paid out by the corporation.

 

The Open Handset Alliance revealed that Asus was one of its 14 newest members on December 9th, 2008. These "new members" "will either deploy compatible Android devices, significantly contribute code to the Android Open Source Project, or assist the ecosystem by providing products and services that will speed the availability of Android-based devices," according to the statement.

 

Pegatron Corp. was split out by Asus on June 1st, 2010.

 

 

Asus

 

Because Garmin has chosen to leave the smartphone market, Asus and Garmin announced in October 2010 that their collaboration would come to an end.

 

 

 

 Over the previous two years, the two businesses had created six cellphones under the Garmin-ASUS brand.

The Asus U36, the thinnest laptop in the world with an Intel Core i3 or i5 processor and a thickness of just 19 mm, was released by Asus in December 2010.

 

Due to dwindling sales as consumers shifted more and more to tablets and Ultrabooks, Asus officially stopped making its Eee PC line in January 2013.

 

 

 

The Raspberry Pi:

Introduction:

The Raspberry Pi Foundation and Broadcom collaborated to create a line of compact single-board computers (SBCs) called Raspberry Pi in the UK. The initial focus of the Raspberry Pi project was to encourage the study of fundamental computer science in classrooms and in underdeveloped nations. The initial model sold outside of its intended market for applications like robotics because it was more widely used than planned. Because of its inexpensive cost, versatility, and open design, it is frequently utilised in numerous fields, including weather monitoring. Due to its support of the HDMI and USB standards, computer and electronic enthusiasts frequently utilise it.

 

Raspberry

Eben Upton was appointed CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading by the Raspberry Pi Foundation following the introduction of the second board type, and given the task of developing technologies. The Foundation was repurposed as an educational nonprofit to support the introduction of fundamental computer science curricula in classrooms and underdeveloped nations. While some Pis are produced in China and Japan, the majority are produced in a Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales.

 

History:

The 1981 Acorn BBC Micro served as an inspiration for the computer. The BBC Micro computer, created by Acorn Computers in the United Kingdom, had three original models: Model A, Model B, and Model B+.

 

Upton claims that the name "Raspberry Pi" was picked with "Pi" being a nod to the Python programming language and "Raspberry" paying homage to a custom of naming early computer firms after fruits.

 

Early designs for the Raspberry Pi were built around the Atmel ATmega644 microprocessor in 2006. Its PCB layout and schematics are available to the general public. To create a computer that would excite kids, foundation trustee Eben Upton gathered a team of educators, scholars, and computer aficionados.

 

The initial ARM computer prototype was housed in a container the same size as a USB memory stick. On one end, it had a USB port, and on the other, an HDMI port.

 

Raspberry

Pre-launch:

u Trustee Eben Upton openly contacted the RISC OS Open neighbourhood in July 2011 to request help with a port. Since then, Adrian Lees at Broadcom has worked on the port; his contributions are mentioned in a discussion of the graphics drivers. NOOBS now includes this port.

 

u 50 alpha boards are produced in August 2011. These boards were physically larger to accommodate debug headers but otherwise identical to the proposed Model B in terms of functionality. The board was demonstrated running the Debian LXDE desktop, Quake 3 in 1080p, and Full HD MPEG-4 video over HDMI.

u A public demonstration of RISC OS 5 took place in October 2011. A year later, in November 2012, the port was made available to the public.

u Twenty-five Model B Beta boards were built and tested in December 2011 using one hundred unpopulated PCBs. The Beta boards had the same component arrangement as the boards used in production. A single design flaw was found in the board's layout, causing some of the CPU's pins to not be held high. This flaw was remedied in time for the first production run. The beta boards were shown running the Rightware Samurai OpenGL ES test, booting Linux, and playing a 1080p movie trailer.

u Early 2012 - The first 10 boards were put up for auction on eBay during the first week of the year. One was purchased anonymously and presented to the museum in Cambridge, England's Centre for Computing History. The ten boards—whose combined retail value was $220—raised more than $16,000, with serial number 01—the final to be auctioned—raising $3,500. The Foundation's servers had trouble keeping up with the load before the debut, which was scheduled for the end of February 2012. This was due to viewers refreshing their browsers frequently.

 

Launch:

l The first proof-of-concept SD card image that could be placed into an SD card to create a test operating system is released on February 19, 2012. Based on Debian 6.0 (Squeeze), the image included the LXDE desktop environment, the Midori browser, as well as a number of programming tools. Additionally, the image runs on QEMU, enabling the Raspberry Pi to be simulated on a variety of other systems.

l 29 February 2012 - The first sales start on February 29 at 6:00 UTC. At the same time, it was revealed that the model A's 128 MB of RAM would be increased to 256 MB prior to its release. "Six years after the project's inception, we're practically reaching the end of our first run of development," the Foundation's website added. "However, it's just the beginning of the Raspberry Pi tale." Following the debut, Premier Farnell and RS Components, the two authorised manufacturers selling Raspberry Pis in the UK, experienced website stalls due to high web traffic (RS Components briefly going down completely).Unverified rumours claimed that there were over two million pre-orders or expressions of interest. Premier Farnell sold out shortly after going on sale, according to the official Raspberry Pi Twitter account, while RS Components received over 100,000 preorders on the first day. A "decent amount" of pre-orders were reportedly being accepted by manufacturers in March 2012.

l March 2012 - The installation of a wrong Ethernet connection caused shipping delays for the initial batch, but the Foundation anticipated that manufacturing volumes for subsequent batches could be expanded without too much difficulty if necessary. Upton noted that the two distributors, Premier Farnell and RS Components, "have been wonderful in assisting to obtain components." "We have assured we can acquire them [the Ethernet connectors with magnetics] in large numbers," Upton said. Taiwan and China produced the 10,000-board initial batch.

l Release of Raspberry Pi Fedora Remix, the suggested Linux distro created by Canada's Seneca College, takes place on March 8.

l The Debian port is started in March 2012 by Mike Thompson, the former CTO of Atomz. With some assistance from the Foundation, Thompson and Peter Green, a volunteer Debian developer, carried out the work primarily on their own. The Foundation tested the early binaries that the two created (neither Thompson nor Green had physical access to the hardware, as boards were not widely accessible at the time due to demand).Although Thompson and Green's Raspbian project was similar to the initial proof of concept image released by the Foundation prior to launch, it deviated from it in a few areas. Raspbian attempted to track then-upcoming Debian Wheezy packages, but the POC image was based on then-stable Debian Squeeze. The armhf architecture, which became the basis for the Raspbian project, was also going to be introduced with Wheezy in addition to the revised packages that would accompany the new version. The Squeeze-based POC image was restricted to the armel architecture and represented the Debian project's most recent effort to make Debian work on the most recent ARM embedded-application binary interface at the time Squeeze was released (EABI).While armel was only capable of simulating floating point operations in software, Debian was designed to run on the ARM VFP hardware floating-point unit thanks to the armhf architecture in Wheezy. Making use of the hardware unit would improve performance and consume less power for floating point operations as the Raspberry Pi came with a VFP. However, the armhf effort in mainline Debian was independent of the work on the Pi and solely meant to make Debian run on ARMv7 at the very least, thus the Pi, an ARMv6 device, would not gain anything from it. Thompson and Green decided to use a bespoke build cluster to create the device's 19,000 Debian packages.

 

Raspberry

Post-launch:

l Reports from the first customers who received their Raspberry Pis surface on April 16, 2012.

l The Model A and Model B schematics are made public on April 20, 2012.

l On May 18, 2012, The Foundation posted a blog entry on a camera module prototype that they had tested. The 14-megapixel module was used in the prototype.

l 22 May 2012 – 20,000+ units had already been shipped.

l Raspbian was released in July 2012.

l 16 July 2012 – It was revealed that 4,000 devices were being produced each day, enabling bulk purchases of Raspberry Pis.

l 24 August 2012 - After it was discovered that the current licence also allowed encoding, hardware-accelerated video (H.264) encoding became available. Prior to the announcement of the camera module, it was believed that encoding would be introduced. On the other hand, there is no reliable software for hardware H.264 encoding. MPEG-2 and Microsoft's VC-1 were two additional codecs that the Foundation simultaneously published and can be purchased separately. Additionally, it was revealed that the Pi will support CEC, enabling remote control operation of the television.

l The Raspberry Pi Model B underwent a second redesign on September 5, 2012, according to the Foundation. The announcement of a revision 2.0 board includes a number of small updates and fixes.

l The majority of Raspberry Pi systems will now be produced in the UK at Sony's manufacturing site in Pencoed, Wales, according to an announcement made on September 6th. The plant, according to the Foundation, would produce 30,000 units per month and add roughly 30 new employment.

l New Raspberry Pi Model Bs will have 512 MB of RAM instead of 256 MB, it is announced on October 15.

l October 24, 2012 - Although this claim has not been widely accepted, the Foundation claims that "all of the VideoCore driver code which runs on the ARM" had been released as free software under a BSD-style licence, making it "the first ARM-based multimedia SoC with fully-functional, vendor-provided" (as opposed to partial, reverse-engineered) drivers.The complete source release of the graphics stack and the release of the VideoCore IV graphics core's comprehensive documentation under a 3-clause BSD licence were both announced on February 28, 2014.

l One of the two major distributors' customers were reportedly forced to wait more than six months for their orders in October 2012. This was reportedly caused by challenges finding the CPU and this distributor's conservative sales forecasting.

l The Foundation launches the Pi Store on December 17, 2012, calling it "one-stop shop for all your Raspberry Pi (software) needs" in association with IndieCity and Velocix. Users can browse through many categories using an application that comes with Raspbian and download whatever they wish. Additionally, software can be uploaded for review and release.

l 3 June 2013 – The term "New Out of Box Software" (NOOBS) is used. By making the process of installing an operating system simpler, this facilitates the use of the Raspberry Pi. An SD card can be prepared without the use of special software by simply unzipping a file and copying its contents to an SD card with a FAT file system that is at least 4 GB in size. On the Raspberry Pi, the card can then be booted, and six operating systems are offered for the card's installation. Additionally, the system includes tools to edit the config.txt file, a recovery disc that enables speedy restoration of the installed OS, an online help button, and a web browser that opens the Raspberry Pi Forums.

l The Foundation reports in October 2013 that the one millionth Pi had been produced in the UK.

l November 2013: They report that between October 24 and October 31, the two millionth Raspberry Pi shipped.

l 28 February 2014 - On the day of the Raspberry Pi's second birthday, Broadcom and the Raspberry Pi foundation made an announcement about the release of the whole source code for the graphics stack and the VideoCore IV graphics engine under a 3-clause BSD licence.

l The Raspberry Pi Compute Module was introduced on April 7, 2014, according to the official Raspberry Pi blog. It is a device in a 200-pin DDR2 SO-DIMM memory module that is designed for use as the brains of consumer electronics goods.

l June 2014 - The three millionth Raspberry Pi shipped in early May 2014, according to the official Raspberry Pi blog.

l The Raspberry Pi Model B+ was introduced on July 14, 2014, through the official Raspberry Pi blog "the latest iteration of the Raspberry Pi. People have been requesting a number of tiny enhancements at the same price as the original Raspberry Pi model B ".

l The Raspberry Pi Model A+ was introduced on November 10, 2014, according to the official Raspberry Pi blog. It has the same processor and RAM as the Model A and is the smallest and least expensive ($20) Raspberry Pi to date. It shares the same shortcomings as the A in terms of Ethernet and USB ports, but it also benefits from the B+'s lower power consumption, micro-SD card slot, and 40-pin HAT compatible GPIO.

l The Raspberry Pi 2 was introduced on February 2, 2015, according to the Raspberry Pi blog. It resembles a Model B+ and contains a quad-core ARMv7 Cortex-A7 CPU running at 900 MHz, as well as double the memory (for a total of 1 GB) and full compatibility with the first-generation Raspberry Pis.

l 14 May 2015: Reportedly as a "side effect of the production optimizations" brought on by the Pi 2 development, the Model B+'s pricing was lowered from US$35 to $25. However, sceptics have pointed out that the price reduction appeared to be a direct response to the CHIP, a less expensive rival that was withdrawn in April 2017.

l Release of a new Raspbian operating system version based on Debian Jessie on September 29, 2015.

l The Raspberry Pi Foundation introduced the Raspberry Pi Zero on November 26, 2015; it is the smallest and least expensive member of the Raspberry Pi family to date, measuring 65 mm by 30 mm and costing $5. The Zero is smaller and consumes less power than the Model A+ but lacks camera and LCD ports. It was distributed that day in the UK and the US along with the Raspberry Pi magazine Magpi No. 40; as a result of the giveaway, practically all worldwide retailers sold out of MagPi.

l 29 February 2016 - Raspberry Pi 3 with built-in Wi-Fi BCM43438 802.11n 2.4 GHz and Bluetooth 4.1 Low Energy and a BCM2837 1.2 GHz 64-bit quad CPU based on the ARMv8 Cortex-A53 (BLE). Raspbian will first be released in 32-bit form, with a 64-bit version following if "there is benefit in migrating to 64-bit mode." A new compute module based on BCM2837 was supposed to be coming out in a few months in the same event.

l The Raspberry Pi Foundation reports in February 2016 that it has sold eight million units (for all variants combined), surpassing the Amstrad PCW to become the most popular personal computer in the UK. In September 2016, ten million were sold.

l The 8 Mpixel Raspberry Pi Camera v2.1 was released on April 25, 2016, in both regular and NoIR (can receive IR) variants. The camera employs a Sony IMX219 chip with a 3280 x 2464 resolution. Software must be updated in order to utilise the new resolution.

l 10 October 2016 - NEC Display Solutions reports that a few commercial display models that will be on sale in the first half of 2017 will have a Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module.

l The Raspberry Pi Foundation announces a partnership with NEC Display Solutions on October 14. By the end of 2016, they anticipate that the general public will be able to purchase the Raspberry Pi 3 Compute Module.

l 11 million units were sold on November 25, 2016.

l Launch of Compute Module 3 and Compute Module 3 Lite on January 16, 2017.

l Launch of the Raspberry Pi Zero W with WiFi and Bluetooth using chip scale antennas took place on February 28, 2017.

l On August 17, 2017, a new version of Raspbian based on Debian Stretch is released.

l The Raspberry Pi Foundation unveiled the Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+ on March 14, 2018—Pi Day—with performance upgrades over the Raspberry PI 3B computer, an upgraded version of the Broadcom application processor, improved wireless Wi-Fi and Bluetooth capabilities, and the addition of the 5 GHz band.

l Launch of Raspberry Pi 3 Model A+ on November 15, 2018.

l Compute Module 3+ (CM3+/Lite, CM3+/8 GB, CM3+/16 GB, and CM3+/32 GB) was released on January 28.

l Launch of the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B and an updated Raspbian operating system based on Debian Buster took place on June 24, 2019.

l 30 million copies were sold as of December 10, 2019; annual sales are at 6 million.

l On May 28, 2020, a $75 8GB Raspberry Pi 4 model is launched. The 64-bit beta of Raspberry Pi OS, which is a fork of Raspbian that lets apps use more than 4GB of RAM, is now available.

l Launch of Compute Module 4 on October 19, 2020.

l Launch of the Raspberry Pi 400 on November 2, 2020. It is a keyboard that has a Raspberry Pi 4 built into it. The Raspberry Pi 4 has accessible GPIO pins.

l Launch of the Raspberry Pi Pico on January 21, 2021 It is Raspberry Pi's first product of its kind, a microcontroller. It is based on the Raspberry Pi RP2040 Microcontroller.

l 40 million units were sold on May 11, 2021.

l Sales of 42 million units as of September 21, 2021.

l Updated version 11 of Raspberry Pi OS (formerly Raspbian), based on Debian Bullseye, is released on October 30, 2021. With this update, the Raspberry Pi 4's default clock speed has been raised to 1.8 GHz.

l 43 million units were sold on November 16, 2021.

l 46 million pieces were sold on February 28, 2022, exactly ten years after the initial shipment.