the power of computing for all

How did you first become involved with the organisation?

I’ve been involved in the Cambridge technology/electronics scene for my whole career, starting out as an intern at Cambridge Consultants, moving to a semiconductor design start-up called Alphamosaic which was then bought by the big US semiconductor firm Broadcom in 2004. The high-performance video processor technology we designed at Alphamosaic went on to evolve into technology that Broadcom used to create low-cost multimedia accelerators for mobile phones (anyone remember the Nokia N8?). Meanwhile Eben Upton, one of the founders of Raspberry Pi and now CEO of Raspberry Pi Trading, our engineering arm, had also joined Broadcom and realised that the technology we were creating would fit his idea for a low cost device for teaching kids computing. I left Broadcom in 2009 to join a start-up consultancy, but three years later Eben and the 5 other volunteer founders had managed to get his idea off the ground, gaining a lot of media attention and selling out the original production runs! It was at this point it really needed some permanent staff to take it forward. Eben asked me to come and run the hardware side of the business while Gordon Hollingworth, also ex-Broadcom, joined to run software.

In the beginning it was just Gordon and me, and we didn't even have an office, so we really had to start from scratch, which was fun. We’ve now built the team to over 80 people on the engineering side and well over 100 on the charity side and we’re still growing. We’ve also recently passed 35 million Raspberry Pi boards sold, most of them built in the UK at the Sony factory in Pencoed, Wales, which we are very proud of.

Why do you think computing skills are so important for young people to learn?

‘Computing skills’ is a very broad term, and can mean anything from working with Microsoft Word documents and spreadsheets to graphic design to programming. Undoubtedly young people need to be able to use computers and technology, as do we all – it is so pervasive in modern life. At Raspberry Pi we are providing an affordable platform to learn all the aforementioned computing skills, but largely we are concerned with teaching the engineering-y bits; how the computer works, how to code and also what we call physical computing where you can control and interact with external things (lights, motors, buttons etc.). Originally this stuff wasn’t something that was taught in schools, though of course now things have changed, in the UK at least, with computer science now being taught at GCSE which is great!

As modern life is increasingly dependent on computers, having a real understanding of how they work and how to leverage them to their full potential and use them as powerful tools is of course extremely useful. Crucially, things like coding and engineering design develop cognitive abilities such as creativity and logical thinking which are not just domain-specific and are useful across many areas of life.

What is your favourite feature of the Raspberry Pi4, or your favourite project that can be done with it?

Although it’s a summation of features and therefore not exactly answering the question, I think the entire product is my favourite! The Pi4 is a huge leap in performance and function over the older Pi3 generation, and is now fast enough to be a very capable desktop computer, something which previous Pis struggled with. As well as this, the Pi4 adds to the existing capabilities of the platform with more and faster interfaces, triple the processing power and more memory. And all at the same $35 price point!

We’ve always considered ourselves a computer company, and the Pi4 is the first product to really take us convincingly into that space yet can still do all the things previous Pis did so well all while using very little electricity.

I guess if you really had to get me to name a favourite feature it would be the dual display HDMI output – a first for this kind of tiny system - so now even a $35 computer can drive multiple displays. This took a significant amount of engineering effort to make happen, from the design of the main silicon chip to iterating the design of the tiny micro-HDMI connectors we use, to make them both robust to the kinds of abuse that the Pi gets and also easy to robotically assemble and test during production at the factory (all Pis nowadays are built by robots, which allows us to keep manufacturing costs down). As for a favourite project, there are so many to choose it’s hard to give a single answer! We see a lot of Pis used in factory automation tasks and I really like seeing that – in fact the factory that makes Raspberry Pis uses many of them to control the process and even in the test systems (Raspberry Pis test newly created Raspberry Pis!). I also really like the Naturebytes (www.naturebytes.org) wildlife camera especially as kids can learn by building it themselves, and then use it to learn about nature. There are also several Pis on the International Space Station –we worked with ESA to qualify them, in specifically designed custom aluminium cases and with various sensors attached for space flight, and we then ran a competition called Astro-Pi for kids to upload code and do experiments. Finally, one of our long standing community members, Dave Akerman, likes sending Pis up into near-space on High Altitude Weather balloons to take pictures of the Earth from 29km up which is brilliant! There are so many more great projects – to see more please visit our blog at raspberrypi.org/blog.

Do you think your time at Clare has impacted the trajectory of your career? If so, how?

I was a Clare student for nearly 2 years while I was studying for my Executive MBA at the Judge Business School, which is a part-time course. So as such I am not the typical undergrad who lived in the College (I actually did my undergraduate studies at Imperial College, in Electrical Engineering). However even the smaller amount of time spent at Clare was a wonderful experience and I do feel part of the College. It’s the Cambridge ‘anchor’ that never lets go, and I have very fond memories of being taken on a tour in my early days, visiting the roof(!), dining in Hall, sampling the whisky in the MCR bar (I’m a big whisky fan) and of course attending my first Clare May Ball. So how has it affected my career? I think it has given me new and valuable personal contacts, a certain confidence to feel I’m really am part of the Cambridge world, and especially part of one of the oldest parts of the institution, and it is always something that impresses!